Amid the economic crisis triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic, there is a risk that the inequality of opportunity in education may increase in Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries unless well designed, properly evaluated, and progressive school finance policies are implemented. Based on comparative analysis of data from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru, this report provides some insights on how school funding policies can either mitigate or aggravate such inequalities.

Between 2014 and 2020 over 1.8 million refugees fled from Venezuela to Colombia as a result of a humanitarian crisis, many of them without a regular migratory status. We study the short- to medium-term labor market impacts in Colombia of the Permiso Temporal de Permanencia program, the largest migratory amnesty program offered to undocumented migrants in a developing country in modern history. The program granted regular migratory status and work permits to nearly half a million undocumented Venezuelan migrants in Colombia in August 2018.

We examine the role of Venezuelan forced migration on the propagation of 15 infectious dis-eases in Colombia. For this purpose, we use rich municipal-monthly panel data. We exploit the fact that municipalities closer to the main migration entry points have a disproportionate ex-posure to infected migrants when the cumulative migration flows increase. We find that higher refugee inflows are associated with increments in the incidence of vaccine-preventable dis-eases, such as chickenpox and tuberculosis, as well as sexually transmitted diseases, including AIDS and syphilis.

Expanding small-scale interventions without lowering quality and attenuating impact is a critical policy challenge. Community monitoring overs a low-cost quality assurance mechanism by making service providers account-able to local citizens, rather than distant administrators. This paper provides experimental evidence from a home visit parenting program implemented at scale by the Nicaraguan government, with two types of monitoring: (a) institutional monitoring; and (b) community monitoring.

Expanding small-scale interventions without lowering quality and attenuating impact is a critical policy challenge. Community monitoring overs a low-cost quality assurance mechanism by making service providers account-able to local citizens, rather than distant administrators. This paper provides experimental evidence from a home visit parenting program implemented at scale by the Nicaraguan government, with two types of monitoring: (a) institutional monitoring; and (b) community monitoring.

Public spending on education has increased significantly in Latin America over the last decades. However, less is known whether increased spending has been translated into a more equitable distribution of resources within countries in the region. This study addresses this gap by measuring the inequality in per-pupil spending between regions with different levels of socioeconomic status (SES) within five Latin American countries: Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru.