More active public policies are needed to increase higher levels of human development. The United Nations' millennium development goals have been adopted by all countries, but despite substantial progress in recent decades major challenges remain. Those challenges are also considerable in most countries in Latin America and the Caribbean and this was the case even prior to the setbacks caused by the global economic crisis of 2008-2009. This book provides a robust quantitative analysis of the financing constraints to achieve human development goals for poverty reduction, universal primary education, reducing child and maternal mortality and improving access to drinking water and sanitation, covering 18 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. The contributions to this book assess the macroeconomic trade offs of scaling up public expenditures for this purpose based on a unique integrated quantitative approach to human development, growth, inequality, and poverty reduction.