Los servicios de cuidado infantil en América Latina y el Caribe

M. Caridad Araujo and Florencia López-Boo
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Florencia López-Boo: Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Florencia Lopez Boo

El Trimestre Económico, 2015, vol. vol. LXXXII (2), issue 326, pp. 249-275

Abstract: Childcare coverage for children under four years of age has increased considerably in Latin America and the Caribbean. This expansion was aimed at facilitating women’s labor force participation. Emphasis in quality services during the first years of life is essential. This document presents systematic information related to the design, management, financing and quality of childcare services in the region. These are the most important findings. First, evidence suggests that there are inconsistencies among the objectives of most of the programs —comprehensive child development— and the design of services that they offer. Second, programs ran by municipalities stand out as having better structural variables (usually associated with better quality of services) in comparison to those that depend on national governments, where investment rate per child served is lower. Third, there is variability in per-child costs of service, which is consistent with not only, a considerable heterogeneity in quality, but also with differences in cost-effectiveness across provision and management models. Offering quality childcare services to all children and guaranteeing that the public supply of these services reaches the poorest families are two important priorities that are still pending in the region’s social policy agendaThe main objective of this paper is to capture climate change impact on endogenous crop choices by Peruvian farmer’s and the impacts on their expected income. The model is estimated across 110 227 farmers in Peru. The results show that both temperature and precipitation affect the selection crops. The study estimates that climate change would reduce the expected revenue per hectare in the range of 8% and 13% depending on the climate scenario. Climate change induces a reduction of conditional income for alfalfa, rice, coffee and maize (durum) and increases for potato, starchy maize, bananas and grapes for both climate models, with results mixed for cassava depending on the climate model. Rice and coffee are the crops with the greatest losses, while the native potato is the crop with the highest gain. Also, the probability of choice of maize and banana increases as temperature and precipitation increases.// Los servicios de cuidado infantil para niños menores de cuatro años de edad han expandido su cobertura de forma importante en América Latina y el Caribe. Esta expansión ha buscado primordialmente facilitar el acceso de las mujeres al mercado laboral. El énfasis en la calidad de los servicios de cuidado durante los primeros años de la vida es fundamental. Este artículo sistematiza información sobre el diseño, la gestión, el financiamiento y la calidad de los servicios de cuidado infantil en la región. Entre sus principales hallazgos se encuentran los siguientes: i) existe evidencia de una inconsistencia entre el objetivo que mayoritariamente declaran perseguir estos programas —el desarrollo infantil integral— y el diseño de los servicios que brindan; ii) los programas que dependen de los municipios se destacan por tener mejores variables estructurales (asociadas, en general, con una mejor calidad del servicio), en comparación con aquellos de escala nacional, así como por un mayor nivel de inversión por niño atendido; y iii) existe variabilidad en el costo unitario de atención, lo cual es consistente no sólo con una considerable heterogeneidad en el servicio sino también con diferencias en el costo-efectividad de distintos modelos de provisión y de gestión. Asegurar servicios de cuidado de calidad para todos los niños que acuden a ellos y garantizar que la oferta pública de estos servicios alcance a los niños de las familias más pobres son dos prioridades importantes y todavía pendientes en la agenda de la política social regional

Keywords: servicios de cuidado infantil; desarrollo infantil; guarderías (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I28 I38 J13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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DOI: 10.20430/ete.v82i326.165

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