Andres Schipani
Andrés Schipani holds a Ph.D. 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, forthcoming from Editorial Planeta. He is currently completing a book examining the different models of social policy adopted across Latin America during the commodity boom of the 2000s.
His research focuses on the political economy of social protection in Latin America. His work has appeared in academic journals and with scholarly publishers, including Comparative Politics, Cornell University Press, Latin American Politics and Society, Desarrollo Económico, and Revista SAAP. His research has received the American Political Science Association’s (APSA) Dorothy Day Award for the best paper on labor politics, the 2022 Best Paper Award from the Latin American Studies Association’s Political Institutions Section, and an honorable mention at REPAL’s annual conference.
He received a Fulbright scholarship to pursue his doctoral studies in the United States. His research has received funding from the Center for Latin American Studies and the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment at UC Berkeley, Argentina’s Fund for Scientific and Technological Research (FONCYT), and the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET).
He is an affiliated researcher at the Center for Research and Social Action (CIAS). Together with Lara Forlino, he co-authors the Map of Social Policies in Argentina, published by CIAS and Fundar. These reports provide a comprehensive overview of how Argentina’s main social programs have evolved, comparing spending and coverage across administrations. Their distinctive contribution lies in bringing together and systematizing fragmented information to identify which groups and needs receive greater protection and which remain underserved, providing evidence to inform the design of more equitable and effective policies.
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.