The Educational Gender Gap in Latin America and the Caribbean

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. The views and interpretations in this document are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Inter-American Development Bank, or to any individual acting on its behalf. This paper may be freely reproduced provided credit is given to the Research Department, InterAmerican Development Bank. Terms of use: Documents inThe Research Department (RES) produces a quarterly newsletter, IDEA (Ideas for Development in the Americas), as well as working papers and books on diverse economic issues. To obtain a complete list of RES publications, and read or download them please visit our web site at: http://www.iadb.org/res.3 Abstract * This paper analyzes the evolution of gender differences in schooling attendance and attainment in Latin America and the Caribbean, for both adults who left the educational system and children in school. For individuals 21 years old and above the paper uses a cohort analysis of school attainment. The results indicate that the schooling gap has closed for the cohort born at the end of the 1960s. Since then, the gap has reversed such that within the cohort born in 1980, females have, on average, ¼ of a schooling year more than males. During the four decades of birth cohorts of our analysis ) the gender gap in attainment has moved in favor of females at a pace of 0.27 years of schooling per decade. A decomposition exercise suggests that the changes in the schooling gap are mainly explained by the educational attainment of females at the higher levels, rather than improvements in the early years of education. An analysis of attendance and attainment among girls and boys between 6 and 18, for Bolivia, Guatemala, Mexico and Peru (the countries that have not closed the gap in adult schooling attainment) reveals noticeable gender differences, favoring boys, only among older children of the lowest income quintiles and indigenous ethnicity.

On gender and growth: The role of intergenerational health externalities and women's occupational constraints

“…According to the United Nations (2010) for instance, in 2007 over 95 girls for every 100 boys of primary school age were in school in developing countries, compared with 91 in 1999. In a study of four decades of birth cohorts covering the period 1940-80 for Latin America and Caribbean, Duryea et al (2007) found that the gender gap in educational attainment has moved in favor of females at an average pace of 0.27 years of schooling per decade. On the other, however, 54 percent of girls in Sub-Saharan Africa still do not complete even a primary school education (Herz and Sperling (2004), UNICEF (2005)).…”

New Century, Old Disparities: Gender and Ethnic Wage Gaps in Latin America

“…The most salient of these can be found in education, where not only attainment matters, but also quality. While there have been important advances towards gender parity on the former (Duryea et al, 2007), on the latter there is some evidence that differences have been increasing for recent cohorts (Calónico and Ñopo, 2007). Gender and ethnic differences also exist in labor market participation, unemployment and job turnover.…”

“…However, by the middle of the current decade most Latin American countries had closed the education attainment gender gap (Duryea et al, 2007;Hausman, Tyson and Zahidi, 2008). Furthermore, Hertz et al (2008) establish that women are presently found to have higher educational attainments than their male counterparts.…”

Gender segregation in the workplace and wage gaps: evidence from urban Mexico 1994–2004

“…Along those lines, it is important to remind that Mexico is one of the few Latin American countries that is still yet to close the gender disparities in schooling for its population (see Duryea et al, 2007). Also, training programs, both at the school and at the job promise to be fruitful, as well as policies intended to facilitate the functioning of labor markets, reducing frictions and search costs for women.…”