Structure and Conjuncture: Policies and Income Inequality in Argentina and Colombia in Times of COVID-19

This article examines, from a comparative perspective between Argentina and Colombia, the interactions between the structure, public policies, and their incidence on the inequality of the different sources of household income, both before and during the crisis generated by the COVID-19 virus and in the recovery phase. The results show that, during the crisis, the governments of Argentina and Colombia implemented broadly similar income policies. However, it became evident that the structure of the labor markets and the previous institutional framework of social protection, in conjunction with the specificity of the design of the policies implemented in each country, reinforced and conditioned the distributive dynamics in different magnitudes. The regressive impact of labor income is underscored, along with the compensatory function of cash transfers in non -labor income, albeit with nuanced differences observed between the two countries.