Alejandro Cid

Subjective Well-Being in the Southen Cone: Health, Income and Family

The happiness literature provides evidence on various factors, other than money, that do seem to contribute to individual happiness. As one explores the produced “happiness economics” literature, it is direct to understand the difficulty to find proper information on developing countries reality. In our analysis we investigate the relationship between income, family composition, health and religion over subjective well-being in the Southern Cone (Argentina, Chile and Uruguay). Specifically, we analyze data from the SABE survey a study conducted among people who are 60 years old or over, in various Latin American countries. Main obtained results show a positive correlation between higher levels of income and health, being married and the frequent religion practice and higher levels of subjective well-being. On the contrary, malnutrition has a negative impact on happiness indicators. In order to add robustness to our results and to deal with endogeneity issues, this paper uses different indicators of well-being, alternative estimation models such as a semiparametric one and a propensity score approach for the treatment of marriage.

Making the Grade: Family Structure and Children’s Educational Participation in Colombia, Egypt, India, Kenya, Nigeria, Peru & Uruguay

Research in the U.S. and much of the developed world suggests that children in intact, twoparent households typically do better on educational outcomes than do children in singleparent and step-family households. While studies in the developed world generally indicate that family structure influences educational outcomes, less is known about whether children living with their two biological parents in the developing world have better educational outcomes, all things being equal, than children in step- or single-parent families, or children living in households without a biological parent. This is an important gap in the literature because step- and single-parent families are becoming more common in much of the developing world. Using data drawn from Demographic and Health Surveys in six countries (Colombia, Egypt, India, Kenya, Nigeria, & Peru) and from the Continuous Household Survey in Uruguay, we find that secondary-school-age children are more likely to participate in schooling if they live with at least one biological parent. Moreover, children in Colombia and Uruguay are also more likely to be enrolled in school if they live with two parents.

The coexistence of Degree-Premium and High-Dropout Rates in the Uruguayan Secondary Education: an Incentives Problem

Although participation rates in the educational system might look impressive for a Latin American country, educational outputs are not that great. Uruguay is characterized by educational gaps and high drop-out rates in the secondary education. In our work we first explore the returns to schooling in Uruguay. In the course of our analysis, we use quantile regression models that are more suitable than ordinary least squares (OLS) for countries where heterogeneity within the labour force in terms of earnings and the impact of individual characteristics on earnings is significant. In particular we test the hypothesis of the existence of a degree premium for those individuals that complete the secondary education (12 years of education). As we find evidence that allows us to confirm the existence of the degree premium, we make conjectures and present a possible explanation that links the evidence between the existence of degree premium, educational gaps and dropouts. The rationale is that since only the completion of the secondary degree will generate a clear economic benefit, many individuals will exit the educational system as they find difficulties in the transit along the secondary level. In other words, the completion of the entire secondary stage might be seen as a long haul race and Uruguayan youngsters end up exiting the process when they are still far from the end. To cope with the estimation problem of unobservable household or children characteristics, this investigation employs an instrumental variable (IV) strategy both for two-stage least squares (TSLS) and quantile regression (QTE).

Impact Evaluation of a Privately Managed Tuition-Free Middle School in a Poor Neighborhood in Montevideo

Using a randomized trial, we evaluate the impact of a free privately-managed middle school in a poor neighborhood. The research compares over time adolescents randomly selected to enter Liceo-Jubilar and those that were not drawn in the lottery. Besides positive impacts on expectations, we find better educational outcomes in the treatment group relative to control subjects. The features of Liceo-Jubilar -autonomy of management, capacity for innovation, and adaptation to the context- contrast with the Uruguayan highly centralized and inflexible public education system. Our results shed light on new approaches to education that may contribute to improve opportunities for disadvantaged adolescents in developing countries. Unlike the experiences of charter schools in developed countries, Liceo-Jubilar does not have autonomy regarding the formal school curricula nor depends on public funding by any means.

Educational Gap and Family Structure in Uruguay

In this paper we use household survey data to study the determinants of children’s educational achievement in Uruguay. As an indicator of this educational achievement, we build the “educational gap” which is the difference between expected years of schooling of a child and actual years of schooling. Among the determinants, we introduce indicators of family environment, focusing on the impact of the parents’ marital status on their children educational attainment. In particular, the results suggest positive infuence of having married parents on daughter’s educational outcomes, after controlling for household background variables such as parents’ education, income percapita, wealth and number of children.

Asignación de derechos de usufructo en mercados informales: Evidencia desde las calles

En el presente estudio, observamos los resultados de una politica de asignacion masiva de derechos de usufructo a los cuidacoches, personas que desempenan –en la informalidad– tareas de vigilancia de vehiculos aparcados en las calles. Sorprendentemente, a pesar del costo reducido y los considerables beneficios de adquirir legalmente el derecho de usufructo sobre la cuadra, la mitad de los potenciales beneficiarios han rechazado la suscripcion a ese programa. Con el fin de entender este mercado y la movilidad entre el sector formal e informal, construimos una base de datos inedita que contiene informacion economica y sociodemografica de los cuidacoches. Dentro de los resultados encontrados, se destacan cuatro observaciones: la heterogeneidad en las razones de entrada al sector informal de cuidacoches; la proteccion del derecho de usufructo sobre la cuadra como el beneficio principal percibido de pasarse al sector formal; la aspiracion a cambiar de trabajo de la inmensa mayoria; la capacidad de ahorro reducida. El estudio concluye con lineas para la elaboracion de una estrategia de identificacion causal que permita medir el posible impacto de la forma-3 lizacion como cuidacoches (i.e., obtener el permiso de la autoridad departamental) en la movilidad ascendente en el mercado laboral.

Interventions Using Regular Activities to Engage High-Risk School-Age Youth: a Review of After-School Programs in Latin America and the Caribbean

In this paper, I review an issue that is an urgent challenge in the development field—the effectiveness of after-school programs for preventing school-age youth violence in vulnerable settings in Latin American and the Caribbean. These programs have proliferated in the region and include sports, recreation, music, tutoring, and other focused activities. Given their popularity and because they target known risk factors for violence (such as drop-out from school, poor academic performance, lack of motivation, too much idle time, low quality and quantity of adult supervision, and social isolation), it is critical to examine empirically whether they can be effective prevention strategies. Unfortunately, most rigorous trials of after-school interventions to prevent youth violence have been conducted in developed countries, with far fewer in Latin America. In this review, a broad range of databases was searched systematically. Only six studies in five Latin American and Caribbean countries were identified. Reported results indicate at least some benefits for youth behavior, although not across all youth. Additional concerns regarding how these programs are implemented and whether specific components can be tied to violence prevention are noted. The need for more rigorous evaluation of these programs is noted.

Beware: a woman is looking after your car

There has been little research on the association between behaviors, gender and usufruct rights in informal settings. Using a unique database from an underprivileged population, who informally look after cars parked in the streets, we analyze the behaviors women and men exhibit when they interact with other people in the street. We find that men tend to commit acts of physical aggression more than women when they have to defend their usufruct right. But, surprisingly, though theory and applied literature suggests the contrary, we found that women are more likely to react aggressively than men, when drivers underpay in this voluntary payment market. Building a Type Index of cuidacoches (indicator of attitude and external appearance), we explore association between aggressive behavior and this Type Index.

The effect of one-on-one assistance on the compliance with labor regulation. A field experiment in extremely vulnerable settings.

This is the first paper to analyze the effects of intense personal assistance on the compliance with labor regulation, within a population of deeply disadvantaged informal workers, using a field experiment. We randomly assign one-on-one assistance to these workers, and, within this treatment group, we randomly assign money to cover the cost of fulfilling the legal requirements to get a permit to work on the streets. One month after the intervention, we find that a worker who receives one-on-one assistance is three times more likely to comply with the legal documentation required by the government than a worker in the control group. We also find that a worker who receives both one-on-one assistance and cost coverage is four times more likely to comply with the legal requirements. The findings of this study shed light on strategies to help highly vulnerable workers to comply with labor regulations.