By Elif Ture
March 31, 2015/iMF Blog

Latin America has made huge progress in reducing poverty and inequality in the past fifteen years. Among the region’s countries, Uruguay stands out as one of the most inspiring examples of the efforts to encourage growth with social progress. The expansion of opportunities and improvement in social indicators achieved by Uruguay since the mid-2000s present a remarkable success story of a post-crisis economic and social recovery.

How did Uruguay manage to pull this off? Our recent report on Uruguay’s economy reviews the country’s main social achievements over the past decade and points to two factors that helped the poorest—strong growth and innovative social assistance policies. But with growth in Latin America slowing, the key challenge for Uruguay will be to keep its growth strong and social spending fiscally sustainable to ensure that these impressive gains are not reversed.