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As the developed world has experienced a shift away from the traditional two-biological parent family, scholars have sought to understand how children are faring in non-traditional homes. Debate has arisen over assertions that children from non-traditional families do less well in school. Concerns about selection issues as well as a paucity of cross-cultural evidence, have led some scholars to question the influence of family structure on educational attainment.Using data from the 2006 Uruguayan household survey, we evaluate the relationship of family structure with children's education using two different methods to deal with selection problems, an instrumental variables approach and propensity score matching. Both approaches yield evidence that growing up in non-traditional family structures seems to be negative related with the schooling of Uruguayan boys, with more muted results for girls. Interestingly, Uruguay is a developing country with two peculiarities, that is, a culture that experienced fairly rapid modernization in terms of institutions -including family transition-, especially compared with other South American nations, and meanwhile an intriguing high level of school drop-out, unusually high for Uruguay's overall level of development. (JEL: I2, J1)

This paper documents the impact of an after-school program called Apoyo Escolar, sited in one of the most vulnerable neighborhoods of a developing country, Uruguay. The outcomes of interest are academic achievement, behavior at school and grade retention. By a field experiment, we explore the interaction effects of being randomly assigned to an after-school program with an indicator of parent commitment-an unaddressed question in previous literature. We found novel results that should guide policy design. Increasing time spent in safe settings does not guarantee academic success: the after-school program is effective in PARENTS' ASPIRATIONS AND COMMITMENT WITH EDUCATION. LESSONS FROM A RANDOMIZED CONTROL TRIAL IN A SHANTYTOWN improving academic performance when children have committed parents. And students' performance at school is highly correlated with parents' educational expectations. Thus, the interaction between hope, family and after-school for disadvantaged children deserves more attention in policy design.

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There has been little research on the association between behaviors, gender and usufruct rights in informal settings. Using a unique database from an underprivileged population, who informally look after cars parked in the streets, we analyze the behaviors women and men exhibit when they interact with other people in the street. We find that men tend to commit acts of physical aggression more than women when they have to defend their usufruct right. But, surprisingly, though theory and applied literature suggests the contrary, we found that women are more likely to react aggressively than men, when drivers underpay in this voluntary payment market. Building a Type Index of cuidacoches (indicator of attitude and external appearance), we explore association between aggressive behavior and this Type Index.