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.

Equality of educational opportunity employing Pisa data: taking both achievement and access into account

La medición de la desigualdad de oportunidades con las bases de PISA implican varias limitaciones: (i) la muestra sólo representa una fracción limitada de las cohortes de jóvenes de 15 años en los países en desarrollo y (ii) estas fracciones no son uniformes entre países ni entre periodos. Lo anterior genera dudas sobre la confiabilidad de estas mediciones cuando se usan para comparaciones internacionales: mayor equidad puede ser resultado de una muestra más restringida y más homogénea. A diferencia de enfoques previos basados en reconstrucción de las muestras, el enfoque del documento consiste en proveer un índice bidimensional que incluye logro y acceso como dimensiones del índice. Se utilizan varios métodos de agregación y se observan cambios considerables en los rankings de (in) equidad de oportunidades cuando solo se observa el logro y cuando se observan ambas dimensiones en las pruebas de PISA 2006/2009. Finalmente se propone una generalización del enfoque permitiendo otras dimensiones adicionales y otros pesos utilizados en la agregación.

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.

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.

Efecto de la competencia en la escogencia de estándares educativos

En la literatura económica no se ha estudiado como la competencia entre las instituciones educativas afecta específicamente la escogencia de estándares educativos y el valor de matrícula. Usando un modelo teórico analizo como la competencia entre las instituciones educativas afectan la escogencia de estándares académicos, comparando la solución en competencia con la solución eficiente y la solución de monopolio. Los individuos son heterogéneos y se diferencian en su habilidad, las instituciones educativas compiten estableciendo en una primera etapa el estándar educativo, y en una segunda etapa el valor de matrícula. Una vez definidos los estándares y los valores de matrícula, estos son información pública, permitiendo a los individuos escoger entre ingresar o no a una institución educativa o a que institución educativa ingresar de acuerdo a la habilidad innata y al costo asociado al esfuerzo. En los resultados se muestra que el bienestar social aumenta cuando en la economía existe más de una institución educativa con estándares diferentes, y la solución de mercado, en monopolio o en competencia, obliga a los estudiantes a ejercer un mayor esfuerzo para alcanzar el título. Independiente a la relación de costos, el valor de matrícula es siempre mayor para la institución con estándar educativo más alto, y mayor en la solución de mercado. Cuando el costo unitario de la institución con estándar más alto es mayor o igual al costo de la institución con menor estándar, los estándares educativos escogidos por el planificador son mayores y el esfuerzo requerido por los individuos es menor respecto a la solución de mercado.

Provisional coverage for independent workers

The study examines how, from the traditional work of the independent artisan, we have moved to autonomous work integrated within networks of specialized businesses. This modality is owed not only to the manner in which labor is organized today, to government stimuli, to actions of multilaterals, but also to unemployment. With the purpose of humanizing independent work and rationalizing business costs, an intermediate category of autonomous worker has been created; the semi-dependent who moves between legal freedom and economic independence. The administration, for its part, focuses on broadening social coverage, not always developed for bureaucratic reasons, which is connected to the low density of contributions from the autonomous workers. The challenge put forth is that of provisional coverage for the independents, which is possible whenever citizens participate to resolve social inequality, resulting from the lack of job opportunities, low purchasing power and educational level. 

Modification of personality variables through application of a psycho-educational program of full consciousness (mindfulness) in university students

This study examines the effects in university students of a psycho-educational program in full awareness (mindfulness) on certain personality variables. A quasi-experimental (group comparison) design with pretest and postest measurements was employed in an experimental (n = 26) and a control group (n = 27). Barratt impulsiveness Scale (BiS- 11), Acceptance and Action Questionnaire (AAQ), Social Avoidance and Distress Scale (SAD), and the Profile of Mood States (POMS) were applied to experimental and control groups. The results show statistically significant changes in impulsivity variables, experiential avoidance, social avoidance, social anxiety, tension and fatigue when comparing the posttest mean scores of the groups.

Intervention strategies on teachers focused on creating meaningful educational environments for mathematical abilities development

This article describes an intervention process undertaken in a training program for preschool and first grade teachers from public schools in Cali, Colombia. The objective of this process is to provide a space for teachers to reflect on pedagogical practices which allow them to generate educational processes that foster children’s understanding of mathematical knowledge in the classroom. A set of support strategies was presented for helping teachers in the design, analysis and implementation of learning environments as meaningful educational spaces. Furthermore, participants engaged in an analysis of their own intervention modalities to identify which modalities facilitate the development of mathematical abilities in children. In order to ascertain the transformations in the teachers’ learning environments, the mathematical competences and cognitive processes underlying the activities proposed in the classroom, as well as teacher intervention modalities and the types of student participation in classroom activities were examined both before and after the intervention process. Transformations in the teachers’ conceptions about the children’s abilities and their own practices in teaching mathematics in the classroom were evidenced.

Monologue or Intercultural Dialogue Between Medical Systems? An Educational Challenge for Medical Sciences

Each medical cultural system constructs knowledge about health through specialization or interculturalism. The knowledge constructed through interculturalism has sought, mainly, to adapt the delivery of health care services to the users’ cultural referents. This emphasis has overlooked the opportunities embedded in the establishment of intercultural relationships between medical systems based on dialogue, especially in regard to the adjustment of the disciplinary boundaries of medical cultural systems that would allow the construction of new knowledge on health. This absence of dialogue has been determined by epistemological barriers inherent to every system as well as by social domination. This article presents some concepts related to cognition processes which encourage the reflection on the possibilities to overcome such barriers so that the health sciences may contribute to the effective implementation of the World Health Organization and the State’s recommendations on the matter.

Gender differences in time allocation of poor children in Colombia

This paper studies the effect of credit constraints and constraints on transfers between parents and children, on differences in labor and schooling across children within the same household, with an application to gender. When families are unconstrained in these respects, differences in labor supply or education are driven by differences in wages or returns to education. If the family faces an imperfect capital market, the labor supply of each child is inefficient, but differences across children are still driven by comparative advantage. However, if interfamily transfers are constrained so that parents cannot offset inequality between their children, they will favor the human capital accumulation of the more disadvantaged child -generally the one who works more as a child. We use our theory to examine the gender gap in child labor. Using a sample of poor families in Colombia, we conform our predictions among rural households, although this is less clear for urban households. The gender gap is largely explained by the wage gap between girls and boys. Moreover, families with the potential to make capital transfers to adult children (e.g. those with large animals), can compensate adult sons for their greater child labor and reduced educational attainment. In such families, as predicted, the male/female labor gap is greater.

Abordajes teóricos en la comprensión de la influencia de los recursos económicos en la actividad física

Estudio cualitativo que analiza los abordajes teóricos utilizados por diferentes autores en la comprensión de la influencia de los recursos económicos en la actividad física desde los modelos de determinantes y determinación social.

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.

Natural resources, redistribution and Human capital formation

How do resource booms affect human capital accumulation? We exploit time and spatial variation generated by the commodity boom across local governments in Peru to measure the effect of natural resources on human capital formation. We explore the effect of both mining production and tax revenues on test scores, finding a substantial and statistically significant effect for the latter. Transfers to local governments from mining tax revenues are linked to an increase in math test scores of around 0.23 standard deviations. We find that the hiring of permanent teachers as well as the increases in parental employment and improvements in health outcomes of adults and children are plausible mechanisms for such large effect on learning. These findings suggest that redistributive policies could facilitate the accumulation of human capital in resource abundant developing countries as a way to avoid the natural resources curse.