This paper uses newly available data to describe the distribution of crime victimization and other criminal activities (including drug trafficking and corruption) around the world. The paper then documents a negative (positive) correlation between measures of criminal activity and happiness and...

Crime has tangible economic costs. It also has less understood and likely sizable intangible costs. In particular, widespread crime has the potential to weaken trust between citizens and institutions, undermine government reform efforts, and become an obstacle to development. Yet, the impact of...

In today’s knowledge-based societies, understanding basic scientific concepts and the capacity to structure and solve scientific questions is more critical than ever. Accordingly, in this paper we test an innovative methodology for teaching science and environment in public primary schools...

The private provision of educational services has been representing an increasing fraction of the Peruvian schooling system, especially in recent decades. While there have been many claims about the differences in quality between private and public schools, there is no complete assessment of the...

This paper provides some evidence that repeat taking of competitive exams may reduce the impact of background disadvantages on educational outcomes. Using administra- tive data on the university entrance exam in Turkey, the paper estimates cumulative learning between the first and the nth...

Las escuelas pobres para "pobres" cristalizan la brecha social y profundizan las desigualdades. En otras palabras, las condiciones materiales de las escuelas pueden tener un efecto redistributivo porque impactan positivamente sobre el aprendizaje y contrarrestan la incidencia del nivel...

Researchers have defined and assessed inequalities and inequities in education in various ways, making it difficult to make comparisons among countries or among jurisdictions within countries. This paper sets out practical definitions for equality and equity in education and discusses the...

Esta Nota Técnica describe la desigualdad en los aprendizajes de los alumnos colombianos y analiza la equidad en la distribución de los recursos y procesos que ocurren en la escuela y su relación con los aprendizajes. Usando la base de datos del SABER 2009, el análisis muestra que en...

This paper estimates the relationship between parents’ educational attainment and income and children’s schooling in Uruguay between 1982 and 2010. This relationship is interpreted as a measure of intergenerational social mobility, and the paper reports evidence that it has decreased over...