This article addresses the complementarity between social policy and pro-growth macroeconomic policies, which turned redistribution into a crucial issue to consolidate market societies through the expansion of demand. It focuses on the recent economic history of Latin America, marked by the emergence of new conceptual paradigms so as to grasp the singularities of the region´s development. Three questions are then raised: i) which social inclusion model distinguishes the new period of economic growth led by the so called social-developmentalist strategies? ii) what role is assigned to the social protection system and to social policies in general in this context? iii) which mechanisms enabled the transition towards a mass-consumption society? Brazil will serve as a case study.KEYWORDS: social policy; inequality, Latin America; structuralism. The growing dissemination of modern products in Latin America in no way changes the weakness of the traditional social relations into which these objects are incorporated. How modern a society is has less to do with the objects that are disseminated within it than with the modernness of its institutions and of the relationships on which the design, acquisition, selection, and evaluation of the usefulness of those objects are based. (FAJNZYLBER, 1990, p.162)