RESUMEN
PIP: Analysis of human resources has a history of almost 3 decades in Latin America. This method of assessing temporary and structural balances and imbalances between population, education, and employment began in the 1960s with recognition of the role of education in development. The human resources perspective tended to be centered more on the availability or supply of resources as affected by educational planning than on occupational requirements or demand. It was also centered on problems of educational investment and planning, leaving aside other basic aspects of human resources development such as health or nutrition. The notion of human resources has progressed in Latin America from imitation of the educational systems of the industrialized countries to attempts to project future occupational structures in Latin America and to adjust training and educational programs accordingly. But longterm projection of occupational structures is very difficult in Latin America primarily because of the unstable and dependent status of Latin American economies which leave them at the mercy of changes in the central countries. A series of studies in the mid-1970s argued for the need to revise the dominant development strategies in order to eliminate poverty within 50 years, implying increased attention to human resources. The economic crisis of the 1970s and beyond had deflected attention away from the actions necessary to reach this goal. Latin America, despite considerable economic progress and modernization, still is incapable of providing productive employment for a large proportion of its population. Around 50% of the economically active population was unemployed or underemployed in 1980. Recent studies have revealed several peculiarities in the occupational dynamics of countries, and they never have the proportion of highly skilled workers that the developed countries do. Urbanization and growth of the tertiary sector are rapid. Where agriculture has modernized, rural employment has declined abruptly. The residual category of labor in the informal sector is large and growing rapidly in countries of the region. These distortions express the structural incapacity of economies on the region to employ their available human resources in a context of rapid population growth and considerable (though still insufficient) investment in education. A different development strategy, oriented toward satisfaction of basic needs of the population, would mobilize human resources and create employment. In the case of educaiton, available data point to a continuing disarticulation between population dynamics, employment, and education. The existence of some 40 million illiterates in Latin America and the Caribbean and the wasted investment in large numbers of highly educated persons who either emigrate or remain underemployed in their own countries express 2 facets of this problem.^ieng