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Over the past decades, Colombian women have experienced profound transformations in their lives in terms of access to higher education, participation in the labor market, and reproductive decisions. However, these advances have not been fully translated into equivalent reorganization within households. The persistence of cultural norms regarding gender roles continues to shape the distribution of unpaid care work at home.

Durante las últimas décadas, las mujeres colombianas han experimentado transformaciones profundas en su vida, en términos de acceso a la educación superior, participación en el mercado laboral y decisiones reproductivas. Sin embargo, estos avances no se han traducido plenamente en una reorganización equivalente dentro de los hogares. La persistencia de normas culturales sobre los roles de género continúa condicionando la distribución del trabajo de cuidado no remunerado en el hogar.

Recent installments of this Blog introduced crucial elements of monetary policy, such as the inflation target and the monetary policy interest rate. These elements are the building blocks of what is known as the target inflation framework —the general structure under which monetary policy operates in Colombia.

En entregas recientes de este Blog se presentaron aspectos esenciales de la política monetaria como la meta de inflación y la tasa de interés de política. Estos temas hacen parte de lo que se conoce como el esquema de inflación objetivo. Dicho esquema se refiere al marco general bajo el cual opera la política monetaria en Colombia.

Although Colombia’s unemployment rate (UR) has declined in recent years, it remains high in the international context. The most recent Labor Market Report from Banco de la República (the Central Bank of Colombia) includes a comparative analysis of Colombia’s unemployment rate and those of other large Latin American countries and discusses possible explanations for this difference.

Aunque la tasa de desempleo (TD) de Colombia ha caído en los últimos años, sigue siendo alta en el contexto internacional. El más reciente Reporte del Mercado Laboral del Banco de la República incluye un análisis comparativo de la tasa de desempleo de Colombia y de otros países grandes de América Latina y describe el origen de esta diferencia.

As usual, we devote the last Blog of the year to provide a preliminary assessment of the performance of the Colombian economy over the year about to end, as well as to examine its outlook.

Como es habitual dedicamos el último Blog del año a una evaluación preliminar del desempeño de la economía colombiana en el año que termina y a una mirada de sus perspectivas.

Inflation is the generalized and sustained increase in the prices of goods and services. When inflation is high, money loses its value rapidly, which affects all sectors of the economy, especially households, as their purchasing power declines. This means that with the same amount of money, a household can buy fewer basic goods such as food, and access fewer services such as transportation and rent.

Since early 2024, interest rates on long-term Colombian government debt bonds, hereafter referred to as government bonds, have been increasing. This means that the government must pay more interest on its debt, so a larger share of its revenues must be allocated to cover such interest payments instead of other expenditures such as healthcare, education, security, or infrastructure. Another way of looking at this is that if these other expenditures are not reduced, the government will have to take on more debt, which, in turn, will lead to higher interest payments.