This paper focuses on fertility choices in Brazil, a country where soap operas (novelas) portray families that are much smaller than in reality, to study the effects of television on individual behavior. Using Census data for the period 1970-1991, the paper finds that women living in areas...

The gender of the household head has often been treated as an exogenous determinant of homeownership. This paper argues that several determinants of homeownership also affect household headship and that failing to explicitly account for this endogeneity leads to inconsistent results. Using...

This paper analyzes the evolution of gender differences in school 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....

This paper provides a summary of the work in seven papers of a Latin American Research Network project intended to identify the following information. The private and public determinants of child anthropometrics; The extent to which the private and public determinants interact and whether...

Raising labor productivity is recognized as a critical factor for increasing economic growth and reducing poverty levels in Latin America. Low levels of education continue to be singled out as the main obstacle to higher productivity in the region. We examine the scope for education to lift...

This paper analyzes the recent performance of Latin American labor markets. We find that unemployment rates are on the rise in most countries and sub-regions of Latin America. The rise in unemployment over the 1990s is not driven by a higher proportion of women, adults or urban workers in the...

(Disponible en idioma inglés únicamente) El aumento de la productividad de la mano de obra se entiende como un factor crítico del aumento del crecimiento económico y la reducción de los niveles de pobreza en América Latina. Se sigue señalando a los bajos niveles de preparación como el...

This paper presents new evidence for major world regions and for the most populous countries in each region on associations between the average ages of populations and three groups of economic outcomes: (1) macroeconomic aggregates (domestic saving as a share of GDP, GDP per capita, capital per...