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Colombia is one of the most inequal countries in Latin America, which at the same time, is the most inequal region of the world. Even though this situation is discouraging it is not new, the difference lays on the importance that this situation has been taken in the political agenda in the nation, awakening multiple expectative between the citizens who has been the eternal losers: the poor. This paper focuses on the challenges that the new government of Gustavo Petro faces in matter of the inequality and poverty that affects over the half of the population in Colombia, at the same time provides a context of the Colombian case in the conjuncture of global and regional socioeconomic changes that incident on the chances of fulfill structural transformations at the social policy. Although this research acknowledges a large spectrum of inequalities existing in the territory (gender, generational, ethnic, racial) it focusses on the income inequality. This analysis takes place based on the data of specialized sources on the subject and the monitoring fluctuations of inequality in Colombia in the last decade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a growth strategy that, modifying the distribution of income in favor of wage earners, allows boosting aggregate demand, productivity and employment. This proposal is essential for the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals, especially those related to growth, innovation, employment, and distribution in Colombia, opposed to the model that has historically been applied and that implied an exclusive growth. To build this alternative vision, the paper presents a renewed theoretical proposal based on the concept of inclusive growth, and by means of Structural Equations Modeling (SEM), the hypothesis that the concentration of the productive structure generates distortions in the economic, innovation process and job creation. This makes necessary to adopt policies focused on increasing productivity and diversifying the productive structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the impact of unions in Colombia by answering the following questions: Is there a wage differential between unionized and non-unionized employees that can be attributed to unions? How large is this differential? And which part of wage inequality among employees can be explained by unions? In order to determine the existence and magnitude of the wage differential, an impact evaluation method called propensity score matching is used. The results show that there is a positive differential in favor of unionized workers. This differential fluctuates between 3% and 5% of the monthly wage, and between 15% and 16% of the hourly wage. When we analyze the impact for the private sector only, the wage differential increases, and varies between 22% and 27% of the monthly wage and between 52% and 56% of the hourly wage. In order to estimate the fraction of wage inequality that can be explained by unions, the Fields decomposition method is used. The results indicate that 4% of wage inequality between employees can be attributed to unions. Unlike the findings for other countries, unions in Colombia contribute to make worse income distribution. The data sample comes from Colombia's National Household Survey for December 2000. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]