A substantial gap in test scores exists between indigenous and non-indigenous students in Latin America. Using test score data for 3rd and 4th year primary school pupils in Guatemala and Peru, and 5th grade pupils in Mexico, the authors assess the magnitude of the indigenous and non-indigenous...

A substantial gap in test scores exists between indigenous and non-indigenous students in Latin America. Using test score data for 3rd and 4th year primary school pupils in Guatemala and Peru, and 5th grade pupils in Mexico, the authors assess the magnitude of the indigenous and non-indigenous...

Typically estimates of the benefits of education investments show average private rates of return for the average individual. The average may not be useful for policy. An examination of the distribution of the returns across individuals is needed. The few studies that have examined these...

Sakellariou and Patrinos analyze the equity effects of public subsidization of private schools in Côte d'Ivoire, update previous analyses, and attempt to assess how efficiently public spending is targeted. The subsidy per student in private (and public) schools increases at higher quintiles....

Effectively educating all citizens is difficult in a geographically disperse and culturally heterogeneous country such as Mexico. How should Mexico educate the type of students who speak no Spanish, live in villages inaccessible by roads, or come from families that cannot afford school uniforms?...

Education for all means learning for all. It means closing the advantage gap-making sure that the children of the poor and disadvantaged achieve the same levels of learning as all other children. This is one of the great challenges any country can face. It is a particular challenge in a diverse...

This paper exploits unique information on cognitive ability to examine the importance of schooling and non-schooling cognitive skills for heterogeneous individuals using instrumental variables estimation. Using a binary instrument based on the 1981 reform in Chile, the authors find that the main...

Typically estimates of the benefits of education investments show average private rates of return for the average individual. The average may not be useful for policy. An examination of the distribution of the returns across individuals is needed. The few studies that have examined these...

Since the development of human capital theory, countless estimates of the economic benefits of investing in education for the individual have been published. While it is a universal fact that in all countries of the world the more education one has the higher his or her earnings, it is...