The Effect of Conditional Transfers on School Performance and Child Labor: Evidence from an Ex-Post Impact Evaluation in Costa Rica

Conditional transfer programs are becoming a common approach to influence household decisions. The evidence to date is that these programs are good at promoting certain outcomes such as school attendance, but that other outcomes such as reducing child labor are more difficult to achieve. This study examines the impact of Superémonos, a conditional transfer program in Costa Rica, which provides poor families with a subsidy for the purchase of food conditional upon children regularly attending school. Using three different empirical techniques—simple comparison of mean outcomes, regression analysis and propensity score matching—we examine the program’s impact on school attendance, performance in school and child labor. We find strong evidence that the program achieves its goal of improving school attendance and much weaker evidence regarding school performance. The program does not reduce the likelihood that youth will work. These findings are discussed in the context of the results from impact evaluations of other conditional transfer programs.

Los mercados laborales en América Latina: el argumento de la oferta

(Disponible en idioma inglés únicamente) En este trabajo se muestra que los factores que inciden en la oferta laboral fueron determinantes claves de los cambios en el empleo, el desempleo y las diferencias de ingreso en América Latina durante los años 90. Las dos fuerzas principales que impulsan la oferta laboral en la región han sido los factores demográficos y la educación.

El avance de los niños a lo largo del sistema educativo en Brasil: el papel de las sacudidas transitorias del ingreso familiar

(Disponible en idioma inglés únicamente) En este trabajo se investigan los efectos de las sacudidas económicas de corta duración sobre el avance de los niños a lo largo del sistema educativo en zonas urbanas de Brasil, empleándose un conjunto único de datos de panel. El grave problema de la repetición de grados en Brasil contribuye con los niveles educativos en general bajos del país. De los niños entre 10 y 15 años de edad que están inscritos en una escuela, sólo 69% en promedio pasan de grado. En este trabajo se investiga si el esfuerzo que le ponen los niños a la tarea escolar se ve disminuido cuando los padres experimentan una desmejora transitoria en sus ingresos.

Human Capital Policies: What they Can and Cannot Do for Productivity and Poverty Reduction in Latin America

Raising labor productivity is recognized as a critical factor for increasing economic growth and reducing poverty levels in Latin America. Low levels of education continue to be singled out as the main obstacle to higher productivity in the region. We examine the scope for education to lift labor incomes above poverty levels in Latin America and find that in many countries education, by itself, has a positive, but limited, potential to increase wages above a minimum level. In general, the prospects are dim because progress in raising average schooling levels has been slow even under the best historical scenarios. We also examine whether the apparent failure of education can be explained by low wage returns to schooling, and poor underlying conditions. We find that investments in education continue to have important payoffs but poor underlying conditions explain the modest prospect for the role of education in the short run. This leads us to consider what additional policies should be pursued in order to ensure higher productivity for workers in the region.

Women in the LAC Labor Market: The Remarkable 1990’s

We examine levels and trends of labor market outcomes for women in the 1990’s using household survey data for 18 Latin American countries covering several years per country. The outcomes we analyze include labor force participation rates, the distribution of employment of women across sectors of the economy (formal versus informal) and across industries (agriculture versus non-agriculture), unemployment, and earnings. Overall we document substantial progress made by women in many areas. The gender wage gap is closing steadily in Venezuela, Costa Rica, Brazil and Uruguay, while Colombian women now enjoy higher earnings than those of men. Women’s share of household labor earnings rose from 28% in the early 1990’s to 30% in the late 1990’s. Regarding the quality of jobs, we examine self-employment and employment in small forms as possible indicators of employment in the informal sector. There is no evidence of a systematic increase in self-employment nor in employment in small firms, and contrary to findings by the ILO, we find that the share of female employment accounted by domestic servants did not increase in the 1990’s. Perhaps the salient development of the 1990’s for women in LAC countries was the brisk-paced, secular rise in their labor force participation rates. We examine this development from several angles. We explore the Singh-Goldin-Durand hypothesis that women’s work status changes with economic development. Mammen and Paxson (2000) examine this hypothesis using data for 90 countries, and find that female participation of 45-59 year olds follows a U-shaped profile, with rates rising with GDP per capita increases above $3000. We find that female participation in LAC does not follow the Mammen-Paxson pattern. Next, we examine the role of schooling in explaining the increase in female labor force participation in LAC countries. We find that increases in female schooling account for 30% of the overall increase in female participation rates. The remaining 70% is explained by increases in participation rates at given schooling levels. Finally, we analyze the role of wages, especially the returns to different schooling levels, as a partial explanation for the pattern of changes in labor force participation rates. All of these findings suggest a fair degree of change in the role of women within households and in the labor market. We conclude that the macro economic picture of stagnation for LAC in the 1990s masks non-trivial developments in the division of labor and time allocation by gender.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39885/2/wp500.pd

The Under-Registration of Births in Latin America

Approximately 14 percent of births are unregistered in Latin America according to estimates by UNICEF (2001). Children who lack an official birth certificate can be denied access to social services, including enrolling in school and accessing health services. This paper examines the under-registration of births in six Latin American countries (Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Peru, and Nicaragua) using Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS). Under-registration of children younger than 5 is found to range from 8. 4 percent in Peru to 25. 8 percent in the Dominican Republic. Striking regional differences are found in all six countries.

Inversiones en enseñanza y condiciones macroeconómicas: investigación micro-macro de América Latina y el Caribe

(Disponible en idioma inglés únicamente) La enseñanza es un factor sumamente importante del desarrollo económico. Hay un gran cúmulo de obras empíricas publicadas sobre los factores que determinan el logro en la enseñanza. La mayor parte de esa obra publicada, sin embargo, emplea datos micro para analizar los vínculos entre el logro en la enseñanza y el historial y las experiencias de la familia, los mercados, las escuelas y otras características de la comunidad local. Esos estudios por lo general no han vinculado el logro en la enseñanza estrechamente con los cambios en las condiciones económicas en su conjunto. En este trabajo se emplea un nuevo conjunto de datos de alta calidad de 18 países latinoamericanos y del Caribe para evaluar los efectos de las condiciones macroeconómicas en el logro en la enseñanza. Se emplean datos de encuestas de hogares para elaborar un casi-panel con información sobre el logro de cohortes de nacimiento de nacidos entre 1930 y 1970, que se combinan con datos agregados de países específicos. Los datos se emplean para comprobar el avance de la escolaridad en América Latina y calcular las relaciones de múltiples variables del logro de la enseñanza por cohorte de nacimiento en relación con conjuntos de variables de estabilidad macroeconómica, dotación de factores, desarrollos demográficos, instituciones, cultura y religión. Estas estimaciones se emplean para descomponer la variación del avance de la enseñanza por décadas y analizar las causas de la desaceleración de la acumulación de escolaridad en la región desde la crisis de la deuda de los años 80.

The Rule Of Law Initiative At The United States Institute Of Peace

Thank you so much, Valerie, for the invitation to join you today. I have chosen what I think is an important part of the larger subject of Peace and Democracy: The Link and the Policy Implications; it is the rule of law

The Educational Gender Gap in Latin America and the Caribbean

This paper analyzes the evolution of gender differences in school attendance and attainment in Latin America and the Caribbean, for both adults who left the educational system and children in school. For individuals 21 years old and above the paper uses a cohort analysis of school attainment. The results indicate that the schooling gap has closed for the cohort born at the end of the 1960s. Since then, the gap has reversed such that within the cohort born in 1980, females have, on average, ¼ of a schooling year more than males. During the four decades of birth cohorts of our analysis (1940-1980) the gender gap in attainment has moved in favor of females at a pace of 0. 27 years of schooling per decade. A decomposition exercise suggests that the changes in the schooling gap are mainly explained by the educational attainment of females at the higher levels, rather than improvements in the early years of education. An analysis of attendance and attainment among girls and boys between 6 and 18, for Bolivia, Guatemala, Mexico and Peru (the countries that have not closed the gap in adult schooling attainment) reveals noticeable gender differences, favoring boys, only among older children of the lowest income quintiles and indigenous ethnicity.

Child labor, schooling, and poverty in Latin America

The authors probe further into how household attributes affect the probability that children will work, and the probability of enrollment and success in school. Focusing on four household surveys in Brazil, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Peru, they find that most child labor is takes place in rural areas, and that more boys than girls are recorded as workers. Children in the poorest income groups enter school late, and often exit before completing the basic school cycle. Enrollment rates for children in the wealthiest families are more than 90 percent for ages 6 to 15. For the poorest children, enrollment rates don't rise above 90 percent until age 8, and fall below 90 percent again by age 12. While the enrollment gap across income groups is only a few percentage points for children aged 8 to 11, about 15 percent of the poorest children already have spent one, ortwo fewer years in school by age 8, compared to the children in the wealthiest households. In addition, those poorest children begin to drop out of school in large numbers after the age of 11. For children aged 14 to 16, the difference in enrollment rates between rich and poor nearly doubles (from 20 to 34 percentage points).