 Ethnicity, education, and earnings in Bolivia and GuatemalaNo 1014, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank Abstract: Indigenous groups are often associated with poverty and so are low levels of education. Guatemala and Bolivia are the two Latin American countries in which the ethnic part of the population is proportionately greatest, with Bolivia being more schooled than Guatemala. So the author tried to determine how levels of ethnicity and education affect the level of worker earnings. His investigation was based on data from household surveys in the two countries. He found that, other things being equal, indigenous people who acquire more human capital enjoy greater economic rewards than those who acquire less. Just giving ethnic groups basic education is bound to improve their position. This finding was supported by both within country and cross-country evidence: indigenous people fare better in Bolivia (where there is more education) than in Guatemala (where there is less). One possible (although controversial) intervention is to provide schooling in the child's first language. Such an intervention has been successfully implemented on a small scale in Guatemala. Bilingual programs also exist, on a small scale, in Bolivia. Keywords: Poverty Assessment; Gender and Education; Health Monitoring&Evaluation; Teaching and Learning; Curriculum&Instruction (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:1014 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank 1818 H Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20433. Contact information at EDIRC. |
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