Educational Reform and Labor Market Outcomes: the Case of Argentina's Ley Federal de Educacion

In the nineties Argentina implemented a large education reform (Ley Federal de Educación – LFE) that mainly implied the extension of compulsory education in two additional years. The timing in the implementation substantially varied across provinces, providing a source of identification for unraveling the causal effect of the reform. The estimations from difference-in-difference models suggest that the LFE had an overall positive although mild impact on education and labor outcomes. The impact on the income-deprived youths was small for education outcomes and null for labor outcomes.Education, reform, labor market, wages, employment, Argentina

Efectos Educativos de la Fecundidad Adolescente: Evidencia Causal a Partir de la Legalización del Aborto en Uruguay

Uruguay registra una fuerte brecha entre las tasas de asistencia escolar de las madres adolescentes y sus pares sin hijos. Este trabajo investiga si esta brecha responde a una relación causal, identificando el impacto de tener un hijo en la adolescencia sobre la asistencia al sistema educativo y la acumulación de capital humano de las jóvenes. Para subsanar el problema de endogeneidad de las decisiones educativas y de fecundidad, se hace uso de la reforma que legalizó el aborto en Uruguay en diciembre de 2012. La reforma convirtió a Uruguay en uno de los primeros países en América Latina –con excepción de Cuba, Guyana y el Distrito Federal de México– en donde la interrupción voluntaria del embarazo o aborto es legal. Sin embargo, la aplicación de la ley se vio demorada en varias localidades debido a que se permite a los ginecólogos negar el servicio bajo la figura de “objeción de conciencia”. La diferencia geográfica y temporal en las tasas de implementación nos permite aislar el efecto causal de la fecundidad adolescente sobre la educación, utilizando las tasas locales de aborto legal como variable instrumental. Éste es el primer trabajo que cuenta con información oficial sobre el número de abortos legales realizados en Uruguay. Los resultados sugieren que el acceso a la interrupción legal del embarazo redujo la fecundidad adolescente. Se encuentra un instrumento exógeno para la fecundidad adolescente -tasas de aborto legal- siendo una de las principales contribuciones de este trabajo. Sin embargo, no se encuentran efectos significativos sobre los logros educativos de aquellas jóvenes cuya decisión de fecundidad se ve alterada por la legalización del aborto. Esto sugiere que los malos resultados educativos de las madres adolescentes no pueden atribuirse a la maternidad temprana per se, sino a desventajas pre-existentes.There is a strong gap in school enrollment rates between young girls with and without children in Uruguay. This paper aims to explain if this gap responds to a cause-effect relationship, identifying the impact of becoming a teen mother on the educational outcomes of young girls. Our identification strategy takes advantage of a reform in Uruguay allowing voluntary termination of pregnancy since December 2012. This reform made Uruguay the only LatinAmerican country –except from Cuba, Guyana and Mexico City– where abortion on demand is legal. However, the supply of legal abortion services faced several drawbacks in some geographical areas where a high share of gynecologists refused to induce abortions, since the law protects the right to exercise ‘conscientious objection’ with respect to abortion. Thus, the supply of abortion services varied substantially across departments. Differences in the timing and degree of implementation provide a source of identification for estimating the causal effect of teenage fertility on education using an Instrumental Variables approach. Local abortion rates -carried out under the new legal framework- are used to instrument teenage fertility rates. This is the first study to have official information on the number of legally terminated pregnancies in Uruguay since abortion reform in 2012. Results suggest that access to legal abortion reduced teenage fertility. We provide an exogenous instrument for teenage fertility -legal abortion rates- and this is one of the main contributions of the paper. Second-stage results indicate the causal effect of teenage fertility on educational attainment is null for the group of compliers. This suggests that poor educational performance of teenage mothers cannot be attributed to early motherhood per se, but to pre-existing disadvantages.Fil: Alzua, Maria Laura. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Económicas. Departamento de Ciencias Económicas. Centro de Estudios Distributivos Laborales y Sociales; ArgentinaFil: Velázquez Battistessa, Cecilia. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Económicas. Departamento de Ciencias Económicas. Centro de Estudios Distributivos Laborales y Sociales; Argentin

Effects of Argentina's Social Security Reform on Labor Markets and Poverty

In 1994, Argentina introduced Pension Reform and Unemployment Benefits as a major reform component to its social security system. This papers analyzes the effects of introducing new individual accounts in the pension system -which was under effect between 1994 and 2008- over wages, employment and poverty. While the macroeconomic effects of a change in the pension system is an issue that is relatively well addressed by the literature, its microeconomic effects are often neglected in the analysis. We use a CGE model to evaluate the effects of the reform on labor market and poverty. Our result indicate that if private pension funds are allocated to physical investment, labor demand and wages increase and poverty goes down. However, these effects fade out if funds of private accounts are used to buy government debt.Social security, Poverty, Argentina

Eff ect of a community-led sanitation intervention on child diarrhoea and child growth in rural Mali: a cluster-randomised controlled trial

Background Community-led total sanitation (CLTS) uses participatory approaches to mobilise communities to build their own toilets and stop open defecation. Our aim was to undertake the fi rst randomised trial of CLTS to assess its eff ect on child health in Koulikoro, Mali. Methods We did a cluster-randomised trial to assess a CLTS programme implemented by the Government of Mali. The study population included households in rural villages (clusters) from the Koulikoro district of Mali; every household had to have at least one child aged younger than 10 years. Villages were randomly assigned (1:1) with a computergenerated sequence by a study investigator to receive CLTS or no programme. Health outcomes included diarrhoea (primary outcome), height for age, weight for age, stunting, and underweight. Outcomes were measured 1·5 years after intervention delivery (2 years after enrolment) among children younger than 5 years. Participants were not masked to intervention assignment. The trial is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, number NCT01900912. Findings We recruited participants between April 12, and June 23, 2011. We assigned 60 villages (2365 households) to receive the CLTS intervention and 61 villages (2167 households) to the control group. No diff erences were observed in terms of diarrhoeal prevalence among children in CLTS and control villages (706 [22%] of 3140 CLTS children vs 693 [24%] of 2872 control children; prevalence ratio [PR] 0·93, 95% CI 0·76–1·14). Access to private latrines was almost twice as high in intervention villages (1373 [65%] of 2120 vs 661 [35%] of 1911 households) and reported open defecation was reduced in female (198 [9%] of 2086 vs 608 [33%] of 1869 households) and in male (195 [10%] of 2004 vs 602 [33%] of 1813 households) adults. Children in CLTS villages were taller (0·18 increase in height-for-age Z score, 95% CI 0·03–0·32; 2415 children) and less likely to be stunted (35% vs 41%, PR 0·86, 95% CI 0·74–1·0) than children in control villages. 22% of children were underweight in CLTS compared with 26% in control villages (PR 0·88, 95% CI 0·71–1·08), and the diff erence in mean weight-for-age Z score was 0·09 (95% CI –0·04 to 0·22) between groups. In CLTS villages, younger children at enrolment (<2 years) showed greater improvements in height and weight than older children. Interpretation In villages that received a behavioural sanitation intervention with no monetary subsidies, diarrhoeal prevalence remained similar to control villages. However, access to toilets substantially increased and child growth improved, particularly in children <2 years. CLTS might have prevented growth faltering through pathways other than reducing diarrhoea

How Does Health Promotion Work? Evidence from the Dirty Business of Eliminating Dirty Defecation

We investigate the mechanisms underlying health promotion campaigns designed to eliminate open defecation in at-scale randomized field experiments in four countries: India, Indonesia, Mali, and Tanzania. Health promotion works through a number of mechanisms, including: providing information on the return to better behavior, nudging better behavior that one already knows is in her self-interest, and encouraging households to invest in health products that lower the marginal cost of good behavior. We find that health promotion generally worked through both convincing households to invest in in-home sanitation facilities and nudging increased use of those facilities. We also estimate the causal relationship between village open defecation rates and child height using experimentally induced variation in open defecation for identification. Surprisingly we find a fairly linear relationship between village open defecation rates and the height of children less than 5 years old. Fully eliminating open defecation from a village where everyone defecates in the open would increase child height by 0.44 standard deviations. Hence modest to small reductions in open defecation are unlikely to have a detectable effect on child height and explain why many health promotion interventions designed to reduce open defecation fail to improve child height. Our results suggest that stronger interventions that combine intensive health promotional nudges with subsidies for sanitation construction may be needed to reduce open defecation enough to generate meaningful improvements in child health

How does health promotion work? Evidence from the dirty business of eliminating open defecation

We investigate the mechanisms underlying health promotion campaigns designed to eliminate open defecation in at-scale randomized field experiments in four countries: India, Indonesia, Mali, and Tanzania. Health promotion works through a number of mechanisms, including: providing information on the return to better behavior, nudging better behavior that one already knows is in her self-interest, and encouraging households to invest in health products that lower the marginal cost of good behavior. We find that health promotion generally worked through both convincing households to invest in in-home sanitation facilities and nudging increased use of those facilities. We also estimate the causal relationship between village open defecation rates and child height using experimentally induced variation in open defecation for identification. Surprisingly we find a fairly linear relationship between village open defecation rates and the height of children less than 5 years old. Fully eliminating open defecation from a village where everyone defecates in the open would increase child height by 0.44 standard deviations. Hence modest to small reductions in open defecation are unlikely to have a detectable effect on child height and explain why many health promotion interventions designed to reduce open defecation fail to improve child height. Our results suggest that stronger interventions that combine intensive health promotional nudges with subsidies for sanitation construction may be needed to reduce open defecation enough to generate meaningful improvements in child health.Fil: Gertler, Paul. University Of California Berkeley; Estados UnidosFil: Shah, Manisha. University of California at Los Angeles; Estados UnidosFil: Alzua, Maria Laura. Universidad Nacional de La Plata; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Cameron, Lisa. Monash University; AustraliaFil: Martinez, Sebastian. Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo; Estados UnidosFil: Patil, Sumeet. University Of California Berkeley; Estados Unido

Pay for performance for prenatal care and newborn health: Evidence from a developing country

Empirical literature analyzing the effect of pay-for-performance programs (P4P) for healthcare providers on maternal care and newborn health outcomes is scarce. In 2008, Uruguay’s Ministry of Public Health implemented a P4P called Metas Asistenciales (Healthcare Goals), a country-wide program that grants healthcare providers an economic incentive for complying with certain maternal and newborn healthcare goals. Health organizations use these funds to provide maternal and child health services. Using administrative records and a difference-in-difference methodology, we evaluate the effect of the Metas Asistenciales program on maternal and newborn health outcomes. We find that in the institutions affected by the program, the number of women receiving an adequate number of prenatal controls increased by 10 percentage points and pregnancy detection in the first trimester improved by 4.5 percentage points. We also found better results among newborns for indicators related to birth weight, premature births, and stillbirths. In sum, the program had a positive, significant impact on the rate of pregnant women’s utilization of health services and on newborn health outcomes. This study thus provides evidence supporting the idea that economic incentives are a promising tool for incentivizing healthcare providers to achieve better health services in developing countries.Fil: Alzua, Maria Laura. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Económicas. Departamento de Ciencias Económicas. Centro de Estudios Distributivos Laborales y Sociales; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata; ArgentinaFil: Katzkowicz, Noemí. Universidad de la República; Uruguay. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Israe

Impact Evaluation for Policy Making: A close look at Latin American Countries with Weaker Research Capacities

The aim is to analyze not only the magnitude and characteristics of the production of impact evaluation (IE) studies in the sample countries, but to find out how IE studies inform policymaking and program management, and how these in turn influence the choices of methods for IE studies. This study looks at the way (IE) studies are being produced and used for policy making in the Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) region (with case studies in Dominican Republic, El Salvador and Peru)