This book offers an analysis of educational financing in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), highlighting that while investment in education is essential, the efficiency and effectiveness in the use of resources are decisive for improving learning outcomes and reducing educational gaps.
Despite its significant decline in recent decades, poverty remains a persistent and complex development challenge in Latin America and the Caribbean. Understanding how poverty varies in the region is relevant but not simple.
We study the effect of care dependence on hospitalizations among older persons in Mexico, analyzing data from the Mexican Health and Aging Study (MHAS) from 2001 to 2021. We use fixed-effects logistic regression to estimate the likelihood of hospitalization during the last year (yes/no) and high-dimensional fixed-effects models to assess its duration (number of nights at the hospital). Our analysis reveals that difficulties with Activities of Daily Living (ADLs) and/or Instrumental Activities of Daily Living (IADLs) increase both the risk and the duration of hospitalizations.
How can evidence contribute to reducing ethnic and racial inequalities from one generation to the next? What role do biases—conscious or unconscious—play in medical, judicial, or police decisions? What do we know—and what do we need to know—to design more effective public policies that support all people? These and other questions were at the heart of the annual conference “Race, Ethnicity, and Policy in Latin America and the Caribbean (REP LAC)”, organized by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) in early 2025.
La gestión eficiente y segura de los datos constituye un pilar fundamental para el diseño e imple-mentación de políticas públicas efectivas. En este contexto, la Subsecretaría de Previsión Social del Ministerio del Trabajo y Previsión Social de Chile está avanzando en el diseño e implementación del proyecto “Nodo Laboral-Previsional”, que tiene como objetivo crear una infraestructura de interoperabilidad de datos en el ámbito laboral y previsional. Esta iniciativa busca consolidar y facilitar el intercambio eficiente de información entre las instituciones clave del sector.
In this article, we present the impact evaluation of Irûmi, an educational robot-based intervention aimed at developing second-grade students' computational thinking (CT) skills in Paraguay. Our results indicate that the program had an effect of 0.09 standard deviations on the students' CT skills, focusing on abilities such as abstraction, algorithmic thinking, and evaluation. These findings suggest that with age-appropriate instructional design, very young children could develop CT skills and, that smart devices and electronic toys can contribute to their development at early ages.
One of the major challenges in education management is ensuring that each school has the education personnel it needs. Across Latin America and the Caribbean, each year, policymakers must estimate and assign teaching positions in schools to ensure education for millions of students. Without proper planning, some schools may have more teachers than they need, while others—especially in rural or vulnerable areas—struggle with too few.
Over the past few decades, preschool enrollment has grown significantly worldwide: from 29% in 1990 to 49% in 2015. While it is crucial for governments to expand access to early childhood education programs, it is equally important to focus on improving their quality.
Este taller técnico presenta y analiza cómo los marcos institucionales tienen un impacto en la sostenibilidad y efectividad de los registros sociales
En este taller técnico se explora cómo avanzar hacia una gobernanza de datos sólida en los registros sociales, combinando marcos normativos claros, capacidades técnicas adecuadas y una cultura organizacional que priorice la calidad, la seguridad y el uso estratégico de la información.