This book breaks away from the exclusively macroeconomic focus of development studies to bring the spotlight to the place where decisions are made: households. Complementing this microeconomic view with an aggregate approach, this volume uncovers clues to declining fertility, skyrocketing female...

"Women at Work: Challenges for Latin America" presents a series of empirical studies that use household survey data from Latin America to analyze trends in female labor force participation rates, the impact of trade liberalization on women's work, tendencies in gender wage differentials and...

Entrepreneurship contributes to a vibrant private sector and can stimulate broader economic growth. Countries in Latin America and the Caribbean have experienced an important growth of microenterprises led by women, but little is known about the factors that explain this trend. This study,...

This book presents a regional overview of gender and ethnic disparities in labor earnings during this last turn of the century. After this introduction, chapter 2 presents the methodology adopted by the book and the data sources employed. Chapter 3 then examines education in the region,...

This book presents a set of studies on contemporary discrimination in Latin America that takes advantage of these new tools by focusing on social interactions that range from cooperation, group formation, and the impact of migration in poor families to specific markets such as housing and labor....

Applying the methodology developed in Ñopo (2004), this paper analyzes the evolution of the gender wage gap in Peru from 1986 to 2000. This methodology has two advantages. First, it recognizes that the supports of observable characteristics distributions differ substantially. Second, it...

This paper surveys gender wage gaps in Colombia from 1994 to 2006, using matching comparisons to examine the extent to which individuals with similar human capital characteristics earn different wages. Three sub-periods are considered: 1994-1998; 2000-2001; and 2002- 2006. The gaps dropped from the...

Returns to labor for workers with similar endowments of productive characteristics in Ecuador are influenced by two characteristics that, arguably, should play no role on the determination of wages: gender and ethnicity. This paper analyzes wage gaps due to both characteristics in Ecuador for...

There is a recent renewal of interest in the relation between shifts in age structures of populations and various economic outcomes. These shifts are triggered by changes in fertility and mortality that take place some years before becoming apparent in the standard age structure and that may...

This paper analyzes gender earnings gaps in Barbados and Jamaica, using amatching comparisons approach. In both countries, as in most of the Caribbean region, females educational achievement is higher than that of males. Nonetheless, males earnings surpass those of their female peers. Depending...