Real Wages Adjusted by Purchasing Power Parity

This paper analyses living standards in the capital cities of southern Latin America during the First Globalisation and the post-export-led period. It examines whether well-being in these cities – relative to London – improved and whether the gap in living standards between these cities narrowed or persisted. To address these questions, we constructed a new series of purchasing power parity (PPP) converters to adjust real wages and analyse their evolution in comparison to London. The findings highlight two key points: first, relative living standards in Buenos Aires, Montevideo and Santiago de Chile were higher in the pre-World War I period than in the post-export-led era, during which real wages significantly declined, falling well below those of London; second, notable disparities in real wages persisted among the cities of the Southern Cone

Capital (architecture) · Latin Americans · Purchasing power · Purchasing power parity · Real wages · Standard of living · Culture, Economy, and Development Studies · Historical Economic and Social Studies · Politics and Society in Latin America