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This article investigates how the type of elite to which a person belongs and their intergenerational contextual experiences are associated with attitudes towards inequality among elite individuals. We propose that membership of the economic elite and access to private schools, higher education business schools and affluent residential areas may contribute to the development of views that favour inequality. Using unique survey data collected in 2018 from a sample of 416 individuals belonging to Chile's economic, political and cultural elites, we construct an additive score to measure attitudes towards inequality. Results of our regression analyses indicate that individuals belonging to the economic and political elite are more tolerant of inequality than members of the cultural elite. Moreover, intergenerational experiences at both private schools and higher education business schools significantly contribute to the formation of attitudes that favour inequality. These contextual experiences also relate to significant attitudinal variations within all elite groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is persistent debate over the role of scale of operations in education. Some argue that school franchises offer educational services more effectively than small independent schools. Skeptics counter that large centralized operations create hard-to-manage bureaucracies and foster diseconomies of scale and that small schools are more effective at promoting higher quality education. We can gain insight into this debate by examining Chile's national voucher program. This paper uses 4th-grade data to compare achievement in private franchises, private independent, and public schools in Chile. Our findings suggest that franchises have a large advantage over independent schools, once student and peer attributes and selectivity are controlled for. We also find that further disaggregating school franchises widens the larger franchise advantage. We conclude that policies oriented to create incentives for private school owners to join or start up a franchise may have the potential for improving educational outcomes. (Contains 1 figure, 7 tables, and 20 notes.)

We examine how different spatial compositions affect the educational achievement in mathematics of 16-year-old students in Chile, a Latin American country with high inequality and one of the most segregated education systems in the world. Conceptually, we complement the literature on 'neighbourhood effects', which typically addresses the influence of concentrated disadvantage, by focusing on concentrated advantage and its influence on educational outcomes. We construct a panel with all school students who took a national standardized mathematics test in 2010, 2014 and 2016 in the Metropolitan Region of Santiago, Chile. We complement it with survey data for the 52 districts of the Metropolitan Region, clustering the districts based on factors such as unemployment, economic inequality, access to services, experiences of violence and stigmatization. Our different identification strategies consistently show that concentrated poverty and affluence are both relevant for explaining educational achievement in mathematics above and beyond individual and school characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6237.2010.00735.x Byline: Dante Contreras (1), Paulina Sepulveda (1), Sebastian Bustos (1) Abstract: Objective. The voucher scheme introduced in Chile in 1981 allows for-profit private subsidized schools to choose their students. The objective of this article is to present evidence of this practice and examine its relationship with academic performance using information from the 2005 SIMCE test, in which parents were asked about the admission requirements for their children's schools. We present evidence indicating that student selection is a widespread practice among private subsidized schools. Methods. Using OLS and after controlling for a series of selection criteria and the segmentation effects that they produce, the evidence indicates that there are no differences in results between public and private subsidized education. Results. Our results show that a student attending a school that uses selection criteria obtains 7-9 percent higher results in standardized mathematics tests than a student from a school that does not use selection. Conclusion. The main conclusion of this study is that the basic belief behind the voucher system in Chile that competition will lead to better quality of all schools is not being met. Author Affiliation: (1)Universidad de Chile

On international tests, Chilean students in 2006 outperformed those of all other Latin American countries in reading and were second only to Uruguay in math (see Figure 1). But although [...]

A study was conducted to test whether a wage curve, negative relationship between the level of unemployment and the level pay existed in Chile during 1957-1996. The study reveals that women, non-university educated workers and public sector workers suffered more from unemployment, but informal sector workers have not experienced pay drops as a result of unemployment, contradicting the informal sectors acts as a buffer during economic downturns.

We study the labor market returns to a state-guaranteed loan used to finance university degrees in Chile. Using a regression discontinuity design, we show that marginally eligible students forgo vocational education in favor of university education but reduce their probability of graduation. Even though university loan takers accumulate more student debt, their labor market outcomes are not different from those of ineligible students. We find suggestive evidence that the lower quality of the receiving institutions accounts for these results. Finally, we extrapolate the effects away from the eligibility cutoff and show that supramarginal students benefit from this policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is the first study that examines the association between sexual orientation and labor force participation in Chile and Uruguay. Using information on heads of households and their partners from recent census data, it applies a simple econometric methodology to measure the relationship of sexual orientation and labor participation, juxtaposing individuals who are part of straight and same-sex couples, while determining any difference in this association according to gender. The study finds that partnered gay men are up to 5.0 percentage points less likely to participate in the workforce compared to married straight men. In addition, lesbians are up to 32.7 percentage points more likely to participate in the labor force compared to married straight women. Trends between the two countries are similar, but the likelihood of participating in the labor force differs significantly. Conservatism in the cultural context and legal frameworks of each country arises as a possible explanation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article studies the effects of the neighborhood in which a school is located on children's mathematics achievement in Chile. It uses data taken from a sample of 127,020 sixth grade students measured by the National Education Quality Measurement System [Sistema Nacional de Medición de la Calidad de la Educación]. The incorporation of a measurement of socio-economic polarization of the geographic environment, which is innovative in urban studies, allows us to qualify some critical aspects suggested in the academic discussion. A lagged dependent variable model is used, controlling for the score obtained by the same students in fourth grade. Using multilevel linear regressions, the results show positive effects related to participation in neighborhood organizations. One critical finding is that socio-economic polarization has a negative and significant impact on the educational achievement of sixth graders. The conclusions highlight the repercussions associated with acute inequalities in the neighborhoods, and speak to the importance of accessing dimensions which are more closely linked to cities' social structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines inequality of opportunity for Chilean children starting from an early age. It uses a psychometric test designed to assess children’s receptive vocabulary (PPVT), height, and weight as opportunity measures. We consider traditional circumstances such as parental income and educational level, but improve on the previous literature including mother’s cognitive skills in our assessment. Our results indicate that Chilean children do not exhibit significant differences in height or weight either as newborns or at two to four years old. Nevertheless, there is evidence of inequality of opportunities for vocabulary skills. Maternal cognitive ability is the greatest contributor. Finally, the evidence also suggests that inequality of opportunity on vocabulary skills increases with age. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Self-employment can be considered as either the result of a self-selection process or a reflection of rigidities and skill mismatch in the labour market or both. We estimate a double selection model where individuals queue for wage work instead of being self-employed in the first stage, followed by employers selecting from the queue in the second. We find statistical support for the double selection model, implying that some individuals are self-employed because they cannot find wage work, while other self-select to be self-employed. Individuals with higher education are more often chosen as wage workers, and belonging to an ethnic group decreases the likelihood of being chosen. Additionally, earnings equations suggest that high ability individuals perform better in both the wage work and self-employment sectors. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between exogenous circumstances faced in early childhood (opportunities) and earnings has been increasingly studied in the past decade. In this article we assess the sensitivity of this relationship to different income measures. Typically the empirical evidence is based on short-term income measures that suffer from variability and measurement error. Using longitudinal data from Chile, we find that when four- and seven-year earnings are used, the relationship between inequality of opportunity and income inequality is significantly higher than that obtained with yearly measures. Monte Carlo simulations with several data-generating processes confirm this result. This supports policies targeted to reduce long-term income inequality via providing equal opportunity to individuals at early stages in life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is persistent debate over the role of scale of operations in education. Some argue that school franchises offer educational services more effectively than small independent schools. Skeptics counter that large centralized operations create hard-to-manage bureaucracies and foster diseconomies of scale and that small schools are more effective at promoting higher quality education. We can gain insight into this debate by examining Chile's national voucher program. This paper uses 4th-grade data to compare achievement in private franchises, private independent, and public schools in Chile. Our findings suggest that franchises have a large advantage over independent schools, once student and peer attributes and selectivity are controlled for. We also find that further disaggregating school franchises widens the larger franchise advantage. We conclude that policies oriented to create incentives for private school owners to join or start up a franchise may have the potential for improving educational outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes determinants of female participation in the Chilean labor force using classic determinants such as age, education, marital status, and number of children. The results indicate that the greater a woman's education level, the greater her labor participation; that older women participate more, though the rate of growth of this effect is decreasing; and the number of children that a woman has is negatively correlated to her decision to participate in the labor force. The article also examines machismo and other cultural values that influence female labor participation. The evidence suggests that the more the women have internalized machista and conservative cultural values, the less they participate in the labor market. Finally, the article concludes that the existence of these cultural factors as a group more than compensates for the positive effect of human capital variables and is statistically associated with low female labor participation in Chile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies long-term trends of self-employment in Chile. Self-employment is associated with poor job conditions, vulnerability, and instability or informal labor markets. Contrary to what is expected, the self-employment level does not respond to macroeconomic variables. Using forty-one cross sections of the longest employment survey available, we show that there is little correlation of the economic cycle with variations in self-employment. Cohort effects are also unimportant, In fact, age is the most important predictor of self-employment; older people are more likely to be self-employed. In addition, we performed a decomposition of changes in self-employment on changes in coefficients, which are a measure of the returns to individual characteristics, and on changes in characteristics. The results indicate that self-employment should have decreased given the changes in individual characteristics, but was prevented by changes in coefficients. We also find indirect evidence that these changes in parameters are not correlated with macroeconomic variables. Finally, the changes in individual characteristics, such as education and age, and changes in their coefficients account for most of the changes in self-employment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By using a synthetic cohort methodology, this paper contributes to the analysis of the evolution of female labour force participation in Chile over the last forty years. We decompose the participation rate in terms of age, year and cohort effects. The results of the estimations show that the age effect significantly explains the participation rate. Cohort variables are also important, enabling us to identify cohort effects associated with both, the number of children and the level of schooling of the group. In turn, contemporary variables are relevant, in particular the cyclical component. All this indicates that the changes in the participation rate may be due in the first place to increases in the number of women in the age groups where the participation rate is higher. Secondly, the increase in the participation rate is due to effects that are associated with different behaviours in the succeeding cohorts of women; and, finally, contemporary variables seemingly have very small importance. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analysis of two water subsidy schemes - a means-tested subsidy in Chile and a geographically targeted subsidy in Colombia - shows that the means-tested system is better able to identify poor households than the geographically targeted scheme. However, the overall distributive impact of both schemes is quite similar, at least for the three lowest income deciles, because the amount of benefits per household in the geographically targeted Colombian scheme are differentiated by the socioeconomic classification of household. Despite the relative merits of the Chilean means-tested scheme, targeting errors are still quite large. More than 60 percent of subsidies accrue to households that are above the third decile of the income distribution. If the policy objective in Chile is to benefit a significant proportion of households in the lowest income deciles, then either the targeting mechanism must be improved or the number of subsidies has to increase to take into account these targeting imperfections. In Colombia almost all households receive some kind of benefit, implying an unnecessarily high fiscal cost. An improvement in the targeting mechanism could lower this cost without jeopardizing benefits to lower-income households. Some suggestions for additional research and for improving both schemes are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a study which examined the evolution of poverty and inequality in Chile between 1990 and 1996. Data and methodology used in the analysis; Trends in levels and composition of poverty and inequality; Discussion of the role of education in explaining earnings inequality.

This paper decomposes wage inequality in Chile over the period 1958-1996. The evidence shows that education accounts for more than 38% of wage inequality. In addition, the return to education explains close to 80% of education's contribution. Finally, a higher convex pattern is observed in the returns to schooling over time. Thus, the importance of university education in the contribution of schooling to inequality has been increasing in the last decades. Therefore, policies aimed at providing access to higher education to poor individuals are not only expected to generate higher earnings, but also lower levels of inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]