Labor Market Trajectories in LAC: A Synthetic Panel Analysis

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Following the seminal work of Deaton (1985), pseudo-panels (or synthetic panel) analysis has been widely used in the context of consumption and income (e.g. Deaton and Paxson, 1994; Banks, Blundell, and Brugiavini, 2001; Pencavel, 2007). In Latin America, the synthetic panel approach has been used primarily to examine income mobility (e.g. Calónico, 2006; Navarro, 2006; Ñopo, 2011; Ferreira et al., 2013).

How Far Can Your Skills Take You

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This paper provides new evidence to characterize changes in the demand for skills associated with shifts in occupations for a sample of 10 of the G20 countries, using information available from LinkedIn profiles as a new and unique source of dynamic labor market data on occupations and skills. A unique feature of LinkedIn’s data is the availability of granular measures of skill importance by country and occupation.

Social Interactions and Female Voting in Rural Paraguay: The Role of Urbanization Patterns on the Effectiveness of GOVT Campaigns

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We use a field experiment to evaluate the impact of two informational get-out-the-vote (GOTV) campaigns to boost female electoral participation in Paraguay. We find that public campaigns had no effect either on the probability of registration, or on voter turnout in the 2013 presidential election. However, households that received door-to-door (D2D) treatment were four percentage points more likely to vote.

CIMA Brief #10: El Salvador: Better Education to More Children It's within Reach

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El Salvador has made significant advances in education in the last decade, with more and more children going to school. But many drop out young, and those who stay in school often receive an inconsistent and inadequate education. Greater and better investment is needed to tackle both of these challenges.

School Finance in Latin America: A Conceptual Framework and a Review of Policies

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Education spending has significantly increased in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) over the last few decades. Most education systems in the region have improved teacher salaries, introduced programs that focus on improving learning in the most disadvantaged schools and systemic accountability. The available data suggests that increased spending combined with economic and social reforms has had an impact on educational outcomes such as improvement on primary and secondary completion rate and moderate but sustained progress in closing the learning gap with more developed countries.

Primary Healthcare Access, Experience, and Coordination in Latin America and the Caribbean 2013 (PRIMLAC)

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With the aim of contributing to the design of evidence-based public health policies in Latin America and the Caribbean and giving special consideration to patient or health service user perspectives, between 2012 and 2014 the Inter-American Development Bank carried out the Primary Care Access, Experience and Coordination Survey in Latin America and the Caribbean, in adult populations in Colombia, Mexico, Brazil, El Salvador, Panama and Jamaica.

Measuring the Quality of the Home Environment of Young Children in Uruguay: Socioeconomic Gradients in the HOME inventory

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Uruguay is one of very few countries in Latin America that has a nationally representative, longitudinal survey of early childhood development. In 2015–2016, during the second wave of the survey, an observational module on the home environment was administered at scale for the first time. The module included items from two subscales (responsiveness and acceptance) of a widely used instrument that measures the quality of the physical and emotional environment: the HOME inventory.

Is Results-Based Aid More Effective than Conventional Aid?: Evidence from the Health Sector in El Salvador

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Results-based aid (RBA) models link funds to outcomes, rather than paying for inputs. Despite their theoretical appeal and recent adoption by donors and multilateral development banks, there is limited empirical evidence supporting this form of aid for national governments. We estimate the effects of a RBA model using a natural experiment in El Salvador, where the same community health intervention was implemented in 98 municipalities using one of three financing models.

Should I Stay or Should I Go?: Career Choices for Young Workers in Latin America

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Labor market institutions shape the return to workers’ skills. They define the incentives of firms and workers to invest in general and specific skills, affecting the returns to experience and tenure. This paper presents an empirical assessment of this hypothesis. We take advantage of rich administrative data from Brazil and Chile, two countries with different regulatoryframeworks. We focus on young workers as they face to a greater extent the trade-off between accumulating general or specific skills.