The unequal lag in Latin American schooling since 1900: follow the money

Abstract

Focusing on education-income anomalies, in which a richer country delivers less education than a poorer country, seems a promising way to harvest a part of the rich history that does not lend itself to econometrics. To test the chain of alleged causation from unequal power and wealth to poor schooling, one must follow the public money, or lack of it, in as many contexts as the data will allow. Public funding for mass schooling is the hitherto untested middle link in the chain. The key to Latin America's poor schooling was the failure to supply tax money, not gender discrimination or any shortfall in market demand for skills. The most glaring anomalies were the Venezuelan and Argentine failures to supply the levels of tax support for mass schooling that their high income could have afforded.Keywords: inequality, education, public sector, Latin America, Venezuela, Argentina JEL Code: N36, I22 RESUMENEste artículo estudia algunas irregularidades de la relació n entre educació n y renta, por la que los países ricos ofrecen menos educació n que los pobres.

The Expansion of Public Spending and Mass Education in Bolivia: Did the 1952 Revolution Represent a Permanent Shock?

“…Furthermore, when controlling by per capita GDP, the evolution of public education spending in Bolivia does not stand out by international standards until recent decades, which is in contrast to the experience of other small Latin American countries. Likewise, following Lindert's (2010) suggestions, this chapter shows that the postrevolutionary increase in education spending did not imply any significant change in the tax support given to primary education. By contrast, the relative importance of primary over tertiary education spending was not different from the rest of the region and, more strikingly, today is relatively low even by Latin American standards.…”

“…Thus, following Lindert (2010), Graph 4 relates the ratio between education spending and GDP with the log of per capita GDP for Bolivia and different Latin American and OECD countries. As was stated in the introduction, Lindert (2010) suggests that Latin American governments have systematically invested in education much less than would a priori be expected given its level of economic development. Graph 4 helps assessing if the Bolivian experience fits into this classification; it also allows identifying if the Bolivian position changed after the revolution and the timing and magnitude of this hypothetical change.…”

“…The rationale behind these indicators suggests that the higher the relative support to primary education, the higher the redistributive impact of public education spending. 19 According to Lindert (2010), the optimal value for the primary tertiary double ratio is 50 %. The Bolivian figure has constantly been below this value.…”

Fiscal Redistribution in Latin America Since the Nineteenth Century

“…Latin American countries commit less to each child's public education than other countries, where commitment is reflected in the generosity of funding per schoolage child and the ability to pay for it is reflected in GDP per capita. 13 Some countries 12 For a quantitative historical overview of the region's disinclination to invest public money in mass schooling since 1870, see Lindert (2010). In terms of schooling outputs, its lagging behind all regions other than South Asia in the education attainment of adults since 1950 has been shown in Reimers (2006), Székely and Montes (2006, pp.…”

“…Though the region has lagged in public education spending ever since Independence, Uruguay was an early leader in education levels, helped by its initially high income (Lindert 2010;Rodriguez Weber and Thorp 2013). Its commitment to primary and secondary education did not flag, although Chile and Argentina caught up by the 1930s.…”