Essays on economics of education and inequality

El documento resume los resultados de los tres ensayos sobre economía de la educación y de igualdad de oportunidades que se realizaron para el caso de Colombia.

Influencia del bajo peso al nacer en el cumplimiento del esquema de vacunación en Colombia

INTRODUCCION. En Colombia y a nivel mundial la vacunación es una estrategia que ha reducido la mortalidad infantil, sin embargo existen bajas coberturas en algunas zonas del país, dentro de las causas de la no vacunación se encuentra el bajo peso al nacer, tema de gran importancia y poco estudiado, encontrándose como una causa controlable y que permitiría a la población acceder a la protección frente a enfermedades inmunoprevenibles. MATERIALES Y METODOS. Se realizó un estudio de tipo observacional de corte trasversal, la muestra fue tomada de la ENDS realizada por Profamilia en el año 2010, se tomó el número total de los encuestados que cumplían con los criterios de inclusión, en total fueron 9694 registros a los que se les realizo; análisis descriptivo, bivariado y multivariado. RESULTADOS. Los niños con bajo peso al nacer tienen menor probabilidad de estar vacunados con el esquema completo con respecto a los niños con peso normal, OR 0762 (IC 95% 0,650; 0,895), se observó que las vacunas en forma individual tienen un comportamiento similar al esquema completo, específicamente en la aplicación en el tiempo indicado para su aplicación, exceptuando triple viral donde no se encontró asociación. CONCLUSION. El bajo peso es un factor determinante en la vacunación a tiempo de los menores y del cumplimiento posterior del esquema, se encontraron variables asociadas al no cumplimiento como el lugar del parto, el índice de pobreza y pertenecer a la etnia afrodescendiente.

Seguros de desempleo: revisión de literatura y propuesta para Colombia

En este artículo se estudia la posibilidad de introducir seguros de desempleo en Colombia. En una primera parte, se propone una revisión de literatura de los seguros de desempleo en la cual se exponen las ventajas generadas por una cobertura contra este riesgo, así como sus inconvenientes. En una segunda parte, se estudian varios escenarios para introducir seguros de desempleo en Colombia. Después de haber presentado el contexto del mercado laboral y de las normas que lo vigilan, se proponen varios diseños que abordan la gestión y la administración del riesgo de desempleo en Colombia. Igualmente se presentan algunas consideraciones teóricas para la valoración del costo del aseguramiento, las cuales incorporan los efectos del riesgo moral sobre la duración y la incidencia del desempleo.

Financial protection for the poor in Colombia: the effects of a subsidized health insurance scheme

Financial protection is one of the objectives of health systems, which protects poor households from falling into poverty as a result of health care related expenses. Expanding prepayment schemes to the poor is difficult in developing countries because labor is largely informal. Providing health care free-at-point-of-service does not adequately target spending on the poorest, but occupation- or community-based schemes have also inherent limitations to achieve universal coverage. Colombia adopted a government-subsidized health insurance scheme (SHI) strategy. The political debate about increasing SHI enrollment needs evidence about the effectiveness of this scheme regarding financial protection. This study runs a four-part model to estimate the effect of SHI on out-of-pocket expenses by the poor that are currently uninsured, if they were enrolled in the SHI. The results show a 43% and 50% reduction in expenses at Bogotá and national level respectively, which confirms the effectiveness of SHI as a financial protection tool.

Gross Inequality and Inequality of Opportunities in Basic Education: Were they affected by Latin America’s Economic Boom?

In the context of economic growth and recovering socio-economic conditions, many Latin American countries have implemented deep educational reforms since the beginning of the century. This paper aims to analyse whether these changes have promoted equality of educational opportunities in the region. Both the access and knowledge and skills dimensions are evaluated for six important countries, deepening the analysis for Argentina, Brazil and Colombia, in order to better understand the trends observed. Results point to reasonable progress in access, but reflect an unsatisfactory evolution of the level and distribution of knowledge and skills as reflected by PISA test scores.

Inequality of opportunity in educational achievement in Latin America: evidence from PISA 2006-2009

We assess inequality of opportunity in educational achievement in six Latin American countries, employing two waves of PISA data (2006 and 2009). By means of a non-parametric approach using a decomposable inequality index, GE(0), we rank countries according to their degree of inequality of opportunity. We work with alternative characterizations of types: school type (public or private), gender, parental education, and combinations of those variables. We calculate incremental contributions of each set of circumstances to inequality. We provide rankings of countries based on unconditional inequalities (using conventional indices) and on conditional inequalities (EOp indices), and the two sets of rankings do not always coincide. Inequality of opportunities range from less than 1% to up to 27%, with substantial heterogeneity according to the year, the country, the subject and the specificication of circumstances. Robustness checks based on bootstrap and the use of an alternative index confirm most of the initial results.

How do inequality affect tax morale in Latin America and Caribbean?

Latin America is well known as an inequitable region. As it is recognized, inequality and corruption perception weaken the way that political institutions works and the democratic system. Focusing on Latin American and Caribbean countries, this paper analyzes what are the elements shaping tax morale. In particular, how the context influences ethical grounds decisions such as the predisposition to pay taxes is analyzed, using the survey carried out in 2005 by Latinobarometro. The objective is to analyze how country performance determines tax morale. To do so, four probitmodels are estimated using Gini index, Transparency International Corruption Perception Index and Gross Domestic Product per capita (GDPpc) as explanatory variables. As expected we found that some socio-demographic variables play a relevant role. Interestingly, we also found that, in this attitude, LAC countries do not register a gender bias. However, those are not our main contributions to the literature on the field. The most important results are linked to: 1) the levelmatters, GDPpc increases the probability of people having tax morale, 2) moreover, income distributionalso influence on tax morale but in opposite direction and 3) corruption perception also reduces tax morale. Those results show that the quality of institutions matters and therefore, the way that democracy works play a relevant role.