School autonomy and parental participation have been frequently proposed as ways of making schools more productive. Less clear is how governments can foster decentralized decision making by local schools. This article shows that across eight Latin American countries, most of the variation in...

Data from 919 household surveys conducted between 1960 and 2012, spanning 147 economies, are used to evaluate the relationship between rising life expectancy at birth and lifetime years of schooling for successive birth cohorts between 1905 and 1988. The study finds significant positive effects...