This paper analyses the influence of new rights derived from the Social Security System in Brazil after the Federal Constitution (1988). At least, three different and independent forces determinate the arrangements in social security policies: 1) the new social rights created by constitutional rules in response to social pressure; 2) the decrease of employment and wages in salaried jobs imposed...

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The article documents the failure of social security in Mexico as an instrument of social protection and evaluates possible reform strategies. It analyses the truncated coverage of these systems for the most vulnerable, the regressive incidence and horizontal inequities of public social security subsidies, and the consequences for old-age poverty and inequalities in basic health opportunities. It...

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This paper discusses the main restrictions, problems and dilemmas that social provision faces in Latin America in a context of demographic changes and low achievements in the economic performance, particularly in the labor market. It is proposed the need to adapt the general social provision matrix as function of priorities and restrictions set by financing access. Due to the limited labor...

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Recent multi-pillar pension reforms tighten the link between payroll contributions and benefits, leading critics to argue that they will hurt women, who have less continuous employment and earn lower wages than men. However, these reforms also remove distortions and target redistributions to low earners, which help women. This paper tests these conflicting claims in the case of three Latin...

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The focus on short-term macroeconomic factors, including unemployment and wages, is insufficient to explain international migration. Institutional factors, bound to change only in the long run, can potentially have a large impact on migration flows. To illustrate this, we analyze Mexico-U.S. migration focusing on social security coverage, an important indicator of job formality. Using...

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We seek to further understand the factors that determine per emigrant remittances using data from 23 Latin American and Caribbean countries over the 1980-2003 period. We find that emigrants avoid remitting when the exchange rate is under pressure. This finding is consistent with the notion that remitters strive to reduce their exposure to exchange rate losses by taking into account the expected...

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In March 2004, BANSEFI and SAGARPA began a project to examine the impact on households I of the Program to Strengthen the Popular Credit and Savings Sector (Programa de Fortalecimiento del Sector de Ahorro y Crédito Popular), which was designed to help non-bank financial intermediaries to abide by the Ley de Ahorro y Crédito Popular (LACP), passed by the Mexican Congress in 2001. During the...

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This paper focuses on the impact that two different types of policy interventions, namely enhancing school quality and contingent cash transfers, have on child labor and school attendance in Mexico. While there are many studies on the impact of Oportunidades on schooling outcomes, little evidence is available on whether school quality programs such as CONAFE also reduce child labor and help keep...

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This article presents the Mexican experience with the introduction of basic transaction accounts. Basic accounts are relatively cheap simple banking products with restricted functionality targeted at social groups that have limited access to transaction accounts. In Mexico, basic payroll accounts and accounts for the general public were introduced. By law, these products must be offered by all...

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Mexican Government’s Banks offer loan guarantees to private banks in order to spur credit directed to non-financial small and medium sized firms and this policy is examined here. Application of representative data to the comparative static analysis of the guarantee-use decision suggests that these schemes, as currently designed, are justifiable from an economic viewpoint. However, there is some...

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One of the central concerns in Latin America an the Caribbean (LAC) has been the reduction of poverty and inequality so prevalent in the continent. Using large world samples, the literature has found that financial development increases economic growth, increases the income of the poor, and reduces inequality. This paper studies the effects of financial development on the whole distribution of...

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The evolution of specific welfare-related indicators for these indigenous populations during the last decade is the theme of this important book. The study declares to have four guiding questions, to wit: 1. Have income poverty rates increased or decreased among Indigenous Peoples over the past decade, and what are the main determinants of observed trends?, How does this evolution compare to...

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Designing educational policies under limited budgets requires a thorough analysis of the impact of alternative factors on student performance. This work aims at providing an analysis of the relationship between university performance and its explanatory factors. The analysis Will focus on the Argentinean case, using the 1994 Census of Students in National Universities, which includes data on all...

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The results of 2000 study of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) show that while Argentinean students performed similar to their peers in most other Latin American countries, they lagged behind all OECD and most of other participating countries. Attention needs to be given to further master the reading, math and science skills that are needed for a knowledge economy; and...

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The teachers union in Mexico, or Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación (SNTE) represents over 1 million members and is the largest in Latin America. This study uses data from the national student tests administered by the Instituto Nacional para la Evaluación de la Educación (INEE), along with data from the Mexican Ministry of Education and other sources, to investigate the...

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The Inter-American Conference on Social Security (CISS) and Universidad Iberoamericana (UIA) co-hosted an international conference on "The Quality of Education in Latin America and the Caribbean" in February 2007. The conference examined the quality of education in the region, the determinants of learning, policy and program evaluation, and the impact of quality of education on the labor market....

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International migrants are persons who cross national borders and remain outside their countries of birth or citizenship for 12 months or more, regardless of the reason for being abroad or legal status while abroad. According to UN estimates, the number of international migrants was 191 million in 2005, and half were in the labor force of the destination country. International labor migration...

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This book gathers analyses performed by several authors on policies considered appropriate by the World Bank to enhance the quality of basic education provided in Mexico, in particular, education received by majority sectors in our society (World Bank: 2005).

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Over the last decade, Argentina embarked on a broad education reform, the Federal Education Law (LFE), being its main objective to expand access to basic education, mainly, by a new organization of the schooling level structure with the extension of mandatory schooling from 7 to 10 years. The provinces reactions were heterogeneous. We try to evaluate the relationship among the LFE and access and...

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In this paper we study the determinants and distribution of learning outcomes in Argentina I measured by PISA 2000 reading and math test scores. To do that, we estimate education production functions at the mean of the distribution using survey regressions and at different parts of the score 's distribution with quantile regressions. In terms of educational policy aimed at improving learning...

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