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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The model of health care financing and delivery for which Canada is best known internationally is its universal, single-payer, first-dollar system of coverage for physician and hospital services. For several decades following its establishment in the late 1950's and 1960's, this model provided public finance from the general tax base (like the UK), at levels of generosity, relative to GDP, like...

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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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Alrededor del mundo se observan dos versiones de la organización de los seguros de salud; la seguridad social basada en el empleo, y los servicios nacionales de salud. En Latinoamérica regularmente se usa la primera, pero se está lejos de lograr la cobertura universal. En los Países Bajos encontramos una peculiar mezcla de obligaciones públicas y responsabilidades privadas. La cobertura universal...

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This paper analyses the factors affecting the decision to apply a reform (parametric and structural) in the Americas, which may hold a specific set of conditions, i.e. a sui generis political system and a high degree of economic openness, among others. Economic freedom is relevant in the case of structural reforms, while results for the share of older population are not conclusive. It may be that...

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We explore the time pattern of remittances using data on return migrants from the Mexican Migration Project. Some of these return migrants have settled in the U.S. and are returning to Mexico to visit family and friends, whereas others are temporary migrants returning home after a working spell in the U.S. We find that the dollar amount remitted first increases with time spent in the U.S. to...

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Despite recent growing demand from funders and governments, rigorous impact evaluations in Latin America and the Caribbean remain the exception rather than the rule. Many commissioned impact evaluations are methodologically weak, and thus only marginally useful in assessing the impact of social interventions. Other impact evaluations feature strong research methodologies at their conception, but...

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This study analyzes achievements and obstacles in the process of moving towards universal coverage of essential health care services in Costa Rica. It describes the country as exemplary in the region, both in terms of population health status as well as health financing indicators. Life expectancy and the level of pre-payment are both comparable to high income countries. However, the process that...

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This paper describes the Chilean experience concerning the implementation of a new unemployment insurance (UI) program. The use of individual savings accounts and private management are essential elements. In addition, a redistributive fund (Common Fund) helps workers pool risks, distributing resources from employed to unemployed workers and from stable firms to workers with low incomes and...

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The private provision of educational services has been representing an increasing fraction of the Peruvian schooling system, especially in recent last decades. While there have been many claims about the differences in quality between private and public schools, there is no complete assessment of the different impacts of these two type of providers on the labor markets. This paper is an attempt...

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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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