Essays on the economics of education in developing countries

• Main Author: Hermida, Priscila
• Published: University of Essex 2012
• Subjects: 338.4737091724
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.571478

The first chapter of this thesis provides descriptive measures of the intergenerational transmission of education in Guatemala, and how it has evolved during the XXth century. The results show white men and indigenous women, respectively at the top and at the bottom of the education distribution, have higher levels of persistence in educational attainment across cohorts. The gap in average schooling between ethnicities is growing across generations; and subgroup means are not converging over time to the overall mean. The second chapter estimates the causal long-term effect of the earthquake that hit Guatemala in 1976 on the educational attainment and adult height of children. The findings show detrimental effects on individuals who were in early childhood, or of school-going age at the time. These children have respectively 0.2 and 0.4 fewer years of schooling on average in adulthood per each additional SD in earthquake's intensity. Females were disproportionately affected. School-aged children and younger children of shorter mothers in affected areas suffered reductions in height. The results indicate natural disasters are not gender neutral and can have long-term consequences on human capital formation. The third chapter explores the effect of eliminating a one-off parental payment at the time of enrollment in the public education system in Ecuador, on the dropout rate during the academic year 2008-2009. The results show the mean impact of the elimination of the enrollment fee was an increase in the probability of staying in school of 2 percentage points. A larger impact was found for pupils living in urban areas, for students above the median of the income distribution and for males. These findings suggest the initiative had a positive effect overall, but failed to reach children from more at-risk groups of the school aged population.