Income inequality and touristic resources in Uruguay: A spatial approach

Abstract

It is known that the endowment of natural and built amenities affects tourism development directly, but it is less known how the allocation and distribution of amenities in a country could generate regional disparities in income distribution. The aim of this study is to explore regional inequalities in wages and their relationship with the development of tourism in Uruguay. We built four indices of touristic  amenities (landbased natural amenities, water-based natural amenities, cultural-historical amenities, and recreational amenities) and then interact them with tourism employment, as a proxy for tourism development for the period 2006-2019. In addition, we estimate a spatial error model to analyze the relationship between income inequality and tourism development. The evidence suggests that there are some regional disparities in income distribution in the tourism sector. Also, some specifications of the econometric models show a positive relationship between employment in activities related to tourism and inequality in labor income, and that the departments with cultural-historical amenities tend to have a more equalitarian distribution of labor income.