This study evaluates the impact of the peer-mentoring program implemented by a Chilean higher education institution on underrepresented students' academic success. Specifically, it assesses whether freshmen who enrolled in 2018 and took part in this initiative performed better than students with similar characteristics who did not. A quantitative…

Introduction: High-stake testing plays a crucial role in many educational systems, guiding policies of accountability, resource allocation, and even school choice (OECD, 2013). However, non-representative patterns of attendance can skew how useful these measures are for accomplishing their main objective. Are we really measuring the quality or…

The Chilean Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey was used to model the choices made by households with respect to day care or preschool (DC/PS) attendance. We also use georeferenced data on the location of centers that could take care of children. We present a detailed analysis of the correlates of DC/PS attendance choices, giving special attention…

This study examines recent trends and factors in school dropout at the upper secondary education level across Latin America. The methodology employs repeated cross sections of data to track the life cycle path of cohorts of individuals in 18 countries. A key finding is that while upper secondary enrollment rates increased in the region, dropout…

Despite consensus that school absenteeism has negative consequences for children's life outcomes, until recently, little was known about the prevalence of absenteeism or its potential to moderate the impacts of school-based interventions. This study provides evidence from a randomized experiment of a preschool intervention involving 1,876 children…

Chile operates one of the oldest and largest school feeding programs in Latin America, targeting higher-calorie meals to relatively poorer schools. This paper evaluates the impact of higher-calorie meals on the education outcomes of public, rural schools and their students. It applies a regression-discontinuity design to administrative data,…

This paper studies multidimensional poverty for Argentina, Brazil, Chile, El Salvador, Mexico and Uruguay for the period 1992-2006. The approach overcomes the limitations of the two traditional methods of poverty analysis in Latin America (income-based and unmet basic needs) by combining income with five other dimensions: school attendance for…