The Unlikely Optimism of Latin America's Youth

Over the roughly 10 years leading up to 2013, at the tail end of the region’s urban explosion, things seemed to be looking up for Latin America. Rising commodity prices and increased demand for raw materials from China catalyzed an economic boom that led to a significant reduction in poverty and, as noted by Moisés Naím in The Atlantic, an unprecedented decline in inequality, creating the largest middle class in Latin American history.

The region also weathered the 2008 financial crisis better than some larger and more developed economies, giving the impression that its growth was here to stay. And the impression seems to have stuck, at least with young adults: a survey commissioned late last year by the Citi Foundation found that city-dwelling Latin American youth were among the most optimistic in the world about their economic futures, even though their cities scored relatively low on the study’s economic opportunity index.