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This paper provides evidence that exposure to illegal labor markets during childhood leads to the formation of industry‐specific human capital at an early age, putting children on a criminal life path. Using the timing of U.S. antidrug policies, I show that when the return to illegal activities increases in coca suitable areas in Peru, parents increase the use of child labor for coca farming, putting children on a criminal life path. Using administrative records, I show that affected children are about 30% more likely to be incarcerated for violent and drug‐related crimes as adults. No effect in criminality is found for individuals that grow up working in places where the coca produced goes primarily to the legal sector, suggesting that it is the accumulation of human capital specific to the illegal industry that fosters criminal careers. However, the rollout of a conditional cash transfer program that encourages schooling mitigates the effects of exposure to illegal industries, providing further evidence on the mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a methodology that uses matching comparisons to explain gender wage differences. The approach emphasizes gender differences in the supports of the distributions of observable characteristics and provides insights into the distribution of unexplained gender pay differences. This nonparametric alternative to the Blinder - Oaxaca (BO) decomposition does not require the estimation of earnings equations and divides the gap into four additive elements. Two of these are analogous to the elements of the BO decomposition (but computed only over the common support of the distributions of characteristics), while the other two account for differences in the supports.

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Peru is one of the most affected and infected countries by COVID-19. The expansion of the virus could not be contained by lockdowns and states of emergency. The re-opening of the economy increased the expansion of COVID-19. We argue that the role of Peru in the international division of labor is not only the structural condition for the persistence of labor precariousness in the country, but also the principal cause for the expansion of COVID-19 in Peru. Labor precariousness and the expansion of COVID-19 are the expressions of the country's economic and business structure. An economic structure heavily dependent on the non-tradable sectors and a business structure dominated by micro business undertakings, characterized by low productivity levels, do not permit the eradication of precarious labor conditions as economic growth hinges on economic progress abroad and precariousness is the source of profit of micro companies. The persistence of labor precariousness impedes the containment of COVID-19. Labor precariousness expressed in wages at the subsistence level and the lack of labor stability in the formal sector, in combination with the structural character of informality have been the catalysts for the expansion of the virus. We demonstrate that COVID-19 is not a democratic virus but a class virus. For Metropolitan Lima, districts with a more than average rate of informality have also a more than average rate of COVID-19 infections. The neoliberal development model has been responsible for the incapacity of the government to implement measures in accordance with the country's social and economic structure that might have contained the expansion of COVID-19. This model is the expression of Peru's function in the globalized world, the relation between this role and the country's economic and business structure, the functionality of the extractive development model for the Peruvian State, and the correlation of class forces within and outside the state apparatuses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Migraciones is the property of Universidad Pontificia Comillas, Instituto Universitario de Estudios sobre Migraciones and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The objective was to determine the effect of education on the economic income of households in Peru in times of the pandemic (COVID-19), for which a quantitative research approach was applied, of a non-experimental type and of descriptive-correlational design; the econometric model of log-linear type was used, based on the Mincer equation, with the information from the database of the National Household Survey, for the period of 2021. The economic income on average was 275.96 soles, with a standard deviation of 1451.41 soles, with high variability, identifying very precarious economic income ranging from 15.00 to 15,000.00 soles/month per worker; the years of schooling of the worker on average were 12 years, showing the scope of complete secondary training, with a population without years of education, and on the contrary, there are workers with postgraduate education, with the variability of 4 years. Finally, the effect of education measured through years of schooling on economic income is positive, or direct, since education explains 14.34% of economic income; the experience of the worker, gender, area of residence, age and marital status, in the same way, have a positive effect on economic income, strongly highlighting gender and area of residence which explain 19.86% and 30.45% of the economic income in the household in Peru. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Peru has experienced during the last decades a significant increase in educational coverage at all levels, including higher education. However, currently high unemployment and underemployment rates cast doubt about the profitability of investments in education that have been undertaken. This paper estimates the evolution of the returns to education in the last two decades in Peru and finds mixed evidence on the profitability of higher education in the Peruvian labor market. Due to the convexification of returns, university education shows average private and social rates of return estimated between 12% and 15%. On the contrary, non-university higher education shows on average rather low private and social rates of return, even close to zero. Therefore, a thorough evaluation of the effectiveness and relevance of that education level seems warranted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the 2003 National Household Survey, mean labour income for an indigenous worker is only 56% of that for a non-indigenous worker. Studies of ethnic discrimination in Peru's labour markets generally find that discrimination is too low to explain inequalities of this magnitude. However, Sigma Theory (Figueroa 2003) predicts that social exclusion is a source of inter-ethnic inequality, and that has not been empirically tested. The primary aim of this paper is to fill this gap by estimating the extent to which exclusion and discrimination contribute to income inequality. Hurdle models are used to tackle down econometric endogeneity of years of schooling and truncation-at-zero of incomes. The results imply that exclusion plays a stronger role on inequality than discrimination: without exclusion, the Gini of labour income would decrease from 0.64 to 0.45, and without discrimination it would be reduced to 0.50. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study that analyzes the effect of race and ethnic characteristics on economic opportunities and earnings in the context of mixed-raced labor market of Peru. In its analysis, the authors has introduced a score-based procedure of white and indigenous racial intensities that allows them to approximate the heterogeneity within the mestizo population and better capture phenotypic differences across individuals. The results of the study suggests that individual with higher white intensities have higher access to services and to private education. Also, the authors found that race matters for earnings differences, favoring predominantly white individuals in wage employment but not in self-employment, suggesting discrimination and selection mechanisms.