Nº 34 (March, 2006). Francisco Haimovich, Hernán Winkler & Leonardo Gasparini. 

This paper characterizes the differences between income distributions for urban areas in Latin America by applying decomposition methods on microdata from regional household surveys. The results indicate that differences between countries in returns to education and unobservable factors which determine wages account for a large fraction of the differences between per capita income distributions of regional economies. The differences in terms of hours worked, employment, fertility, gender and age gaps and educational structure seem to be on average, less important.