Latin American women's earnings and participation in the labor force

Using historical census data and the latest household surveys, the authors investigate changes in female employment in Latin America, the factors that determine women's participation in the labor force, and the reasons for the gap between men's and women's earnings. The authors find, to their surprise, that despite worsened economic conditions since the 1970s, women's participation in the labor force has increased significantly since the 1950s. One explanation may be that women benefitted disproportionately from expansion of the public sector. The factors that have most affected women's decisions to join the work force have been education and family conditions. Creating opportunities for women's education and employment when such factors are absent will improve efficiency and reduce poverty. Other policy based factors that can affect women's participation in the work force include the availability of family planning services and child-care facilities. Women's participation in the labor force can also be affected by improving family law and tax regulations that create hardships for women, especially in the Caribbean. In all of the countries studied, women are rewarded less than men and gender differences in human capital endowments account for an average of about a third of the observed difference in earnings - prima facie evidence of discrimination. On the other hand, women appear to be rewarded more proportionate to their human capital endowments than men are.Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Primary Education,Population&Development,Health Economics&Finance,Agricultural Knowledge&Information Systems

Education : past, present and future global challenges

Progress in educational development in the world since 1900 has been slow and uneven between countries. Providing basic education for all children in developing countries has been and remains an unmet challenge of governments and international organizations alike. This is in sharp contrast to recent findings in the economics literature on the catalytic role of human capital for economic growth and social development in general. Using a newly constructed matched data set on education and national accounts in the 1950 to 2010 period, this paper estimates the loss of income and equity associated with not having a faster rate of human capital accumulation, using alternative methodologies and specific country examples. Such loss is projected backward (1900-1950) and forward (2010-2050) using plausible assumptions regarding what countries could have done in the past or may do in the future to accelerate human capital formation. The findings suggest that the welfare loss in terms of per capita income conservatively ranges from about 7 to 10 percent. Improved educational attainment is also shown to have an effect in reducing income inequality.Education For All,Economic Theory&Research,Primary Education,Access&Equity in Basic Education,Achieving Shared Growth

Returns to investment in education : a further update

Returns to investment in education based on human capital theory have been estimated since the late 1950s. In the 40-plus year history of estimates of returns to investment in education, there have been several reviews of the empirical results in attempts to establish patterns. Many more estimates from a wide variety of countries, including over time evidence, and estimates based on new econometric techniques, reaffirm the importance of human capital theory. The suthors review and present the latest estimates and patterns as found in the literature at the turn of the century. However, because the availability of rate of return estimates has grown exponentially, the authors include a new section on the need for selectivity in comparing returns to investment in education and establishing related patterns.Curriculum&Instruction,Teaching and Learning,Public Health Promotion,Decentralization,Economic Theory&Research,Agricultural Knowledge&Information Systems,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Economics of Education

Socioeconomic and ethnic determinants of grade repetition in Bolivia and Guatemala

After reviewing the literature on repetition (students repeating grades in schools) in developing countries, the authors examine factors related to repetition in Bolivia and Guatemala. They develop a model to estimate the incidence and determinants of repetition. The use multivariate logistic regression analysis to estimate the determinants of repetition, using the results in simulations to determine probabilities of who is more likely to repeat. Their empirical analysis shows that certain populations are more likely to repeat a grade: children from less wealthy households and children of indigenous origins. This suggests that any targeting activities could be directed to the poor and could have an indigenous component, such as bilingual education.Teaching and Learning,Primary Education,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Youth and Governance,Gender and Education

Achievement evaluation of Colombia's Escuela Nueva : is multigrade the answer?

In the mid 1980s, half of Colombia's rural schools did not offer complete primary education and more than half of rural children between the ages of 7 and 9 had never attended school. Unitary schools - multigrade classrooms taught by one teacher - were established in the early 1960s in isolated rural areas with few students. However, when efforts were made to expand the program nationally several problems became apparent - with teacher training, with the automatic promotion system, and with the relevance of course content to rural life. Escuela Nueva was created in 1976 as an official improvement on the unitary school. By 1989 enrollment increased to 17,948 schools, serving 800,000 students. Escuela Nueva is a rural school in which one or two teachers offer all five years of primary education in or two multigrade classrooms. Promotion is flexible, but not automatic. Special instruction materials are used which encourage the practical application of what is learned to life in a rural community. The system supports peer instruction, with older students coaching younger ones. The schools have study corners focused on different subject areas and a small library that also functions as a community information center. Many activities are designed to involve parents in support of their child's learning. The authors found that Escuela Nueva had significantly improved student outcomes, community participation as well as reducing dropout rates.Primary Education,Gender and Education,Educational Sciences,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Teaching and Learning

Teachers'salaries in Latin America : a comparative analysis

Data from household surveys of 12 Latin American countries were used to assess how teachers'salaries compare with those of workers in other occupations. The results show that salaries vary among countries, ranging from an apparent 35 percent underpayment in Bolivia (compared with the contol group) to a 65 percent overypayment in Colombia. But when statistical controls are introduced for differences in education, hours worked, and gender composition between the teachers group and the comparator group, much of the earnings differential disappears. The authors conclude that the data do not support the position that teachers are either overpaid or underpaid.Teaching and Learning,Skills Development and Labor Force Training,Gender and Education,ICT Policy and Strategies,Primary Education

Returns to investment in education : a global update

The author updates compilations of rate of return estimates to investment in education published since 1985 - and discusses methodological issues surrounding those estimates. Some key patterns: among the three main levels of education, primary education continues to exhibit the highest social profitability in all world regions - private returns are considerably higher than social returns because of the public subsidization of education; the degree of public subsidy increases with the level of education, which is regressive; social and private returns at all levels generally decline by the level of a country's per capita income; overall, the returns to female education are higher than those to male education, but at individual levels of education the pattern is more mixed; the returns to the academic secondary school track are higher than the vocational track - since unit cost of vocational education is much higher; and the returns for those who work in the private (competitive) sector of the economy are higher than in the public (noncompetitive) sector. And the returns in the self-employment (unregulated) sector of the economy are higher than in the dependent employment sector. Controversies in the literature are discussed in the light of the new evidence. The undisputable and universal positive correlation between education and earnings can be interpreted in many ways. The causation issue on whether education really affects earnings can be answered only with experimental data generated by randomly exposing different people to various amounts of education. Given the fact that moral and pragmatic considerations prevent the generation of such pure data, researchers have to make do with indirect inferences or natural experiments. Some have been attempted. The author looks at the research on overeducation or surplus schooling. The conclusions reinforce earlier patterns. They confirm that primary education continues to be the number one investment priority in developing countries. They also show that educating females is marginally more profitable than educating males, that the academic secondary school curriculum is a better investment than the technical/vocational tract, and that the returns to education obey the same rules as investment in conventional capital - that is, they decline as investment is expanded.Curriculum&Instruction,Teaching and Learning,Primary Education,Gender and Education,Health Monitoring&Evaluation

On the Explanation of Schooling, Occupation and Earnings: some alternative path analysi

Jencks's well-known sociological path analysis connecting parental socio-economic characteristics and some ability measure of the person investigated with his or her schooling, occupation and income is available for the United States, Sweden and the Netherlands in various versions. For the United Kingdom the analysis has now been applied to the new General Household Survey, supplying over 5000 observations. This article compares the various results and offers a few alternative models, using the American and British data. These alternatives do not offer, in the British case, improvements in variance explained. Moreover, most regression coefficients show wide variations between countries. A suggestion for improvement is derived from a recent study using at least three occupation characteristics. We are grateful to the British Office of Population Census and Surveys for making available to us the data from which the UK results reported in this article were obtained