Since the early 2000s, after a long period of wide and persistent gaps, Latin America has experienced a
steady decline in income inequality, associated with changes in labor income. This paper presents evidence
about an homogeneous fall of labor income inequality across countries since early 2000’s (lower earnings
dispersion) and its main differences respect to the 90’s trends, where labor inequality increased slightly and with
more heterogeneous trends across countries. It also shows that the decline in the Gini coefficient of labor
income inequality, which dropped from 0.473 in 2002 to 0.410 in 2013, was supported by a substantial
expansion in real hourly earnings at the bottom of the wage distribution. It concludes that the narrowing in
labor inequality in Latin America has been closely associated with a constant, but slow decrease in the education
premium since the mid-1990s, coupled with a steady drop in the experience premium observed since the early
2000s.