Andres Schipani
Andrés Schipani holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley, and is a professor in the Department of Social Sciences at Universidad de San Andrés, where he is also a member of the Center for Human Development Studies.
He is the author of "Pobreza: la grieta que importa. El ocaso de la Argentina integrada", published with Editorial Planeta. He is currently finalizing a book that analyzes the different models of social policy adopted in Latin America during the commodity boom of the 2000s. Together with Lara Forlino, he is the author of Mapa de Políticas Sociales en la Argentina, published by CIAS and Fundar. He is an affiliated researcher at the Center for Social Research and Action (CIAS).
His research focuses on the political economy of social protection in Latin America. He has published work in several academic journals and presses, including Comparative Politics, Cornell University Press, Latin American Politics and Society, Desarrollo Económico, and Revista SAAP. His research has been recognized with the “Dorothy Day” Award for the best paper on labor politics from the American Political Science Association (APSA), selected as the best paper of 2022 by the Political Institutions Section of the Latin American Studies Association, and awarded an honorable mention at the REPAL Annual Conference.
Previously, he was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to pursue his doctoral studies in the United States. His research is or has been funded by the Center for Latin American Studies (UC Berkeley), the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (UC Berkeley), the Fund for Scientific and Technological Research (FONCYT), and the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET).
Poverty: The Divide That Matters
For much of the twentieth century, Argentines saw themselves as a middle-class society, with low levels of poverty and ample opportunities for upward mobility through work and education. That image no longer reflects reality: today, half of all children grow up in poverty, five million people live in informal settlements without access to basic services, and each crisis raises the poverty floor to a more alarming level than the last.
While public debate remains fixated on political polarization, this book sheds light on a deeper and more enduring divide: the one separating the Argentina that is integrated from the Argentina that is excluded. How did we get here, and why do we remain trapped in this reality?
To answer these questions, political scientist Andrés Schipani brings together leading economists, sociologists, and political scientists to examine how poverty has evolved in Argentina, the logic behind the expansion of social policies, and their impact on levels of exclusion. They also explore poverty’s less quantifiable dimensions: its intergenerational transmission, the challenges of educating children on an uneven playing field, young people trapped in a present with no future, and the ways in which the state engages with the world of the poor through social movements and political brokers.
The result is a rigorous assessment that dismantles some of the most deeply entrenched myths about poverty: that social policy has failed completely, or that poverty is solely an economic problem whose solution lies in larger income transfers or economic growth. Instead, the book shows that poverty is also shaped by a lack of prospects, fragile caregiving environments, and disrupted educational and employment trajectories. In this context, it argues that social policies have been essential in containing poverty, but far less effective as a springboard for social mobility. *Poverty: The Divide That Matters* is an urgent invitation to confront Argentina’s greatest problem. It is a tragedy we still have time to reverse, although the window for doing so will not remain open forever.