Educational expansion and inequality of earnings opportunities: Recent trends in Latin American countries

Type Working Paper - Informe de Desarrollo Humano para América Latina y el Caribe 2010 Background Paper
Title Educational expansion and inequality of earnings opportunities: Recent trends in Latin American countries
Author(s)
Publication (Day/Month/Year) 2009
URL http://www.idhalc-actuarsobreelfuturo.org/site/papers/papers_30.pdf
Abstract
This chapter provides detailed evidence on the recent trends in the distribution of earnings opportunities, among men aged 40 to 49, in a set of five Latin American countries – Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, and Peru -, and studies the contribution of the educational expansion observed between the early 1960s to the mid 1980s to these trends. Under the periods under consideration, the early 1990s for Brazil, the late 1990s and early 2000s for the others, the five countries experienced diverse macroeconomic trajectories with sustained levels of growth in Panama, Ecuador and Peru, but stagnation in Brazil and Colombia. If overall earnings inequality has decreased in most countries, evidence of significant reductions in inequality of earnings opportunities is found only for Brazil and Peru. The cohorts under study benefited the past educational expansion in all five countries. Simulation decompositions suggest that, if these educational changes were minor factor of changes in overall earnings inequality, they improved the distribution of earnings opportunities at least in Brazil, Colombia and Ecuador.

Related studies

»
»
»
»