Using micro data for the urban areas of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico, the authors document trends in men's returns to education during the 1980s and the 1990s and estimate the role of supply and demand factors in explaining the changes in skill premia. They propose a model of...

Do aggregate income shocks, such as those caused by macroeconomic crises or droughts, reduce child human capital? The answer to this question has important implications for public policy. If shocks reduce investments in children, they may have a long-lasting impact on poverty and its...

How important are subsistence concerns in a family's decision to send a child to work? We consider this question in Ecuador, where poor families are selected at random to receive a cash transfer that is equivalent to 7 percent of monthly expenditures. Winning the cash transfer lottery is...

Between 1992 and 1998 the Peruvian Social Fund (FONCODES) spent about US-Dollar 570 million funding microprojects throughout the country. Many of these projects involved constructing and renovating school facilities. This article uses data from FONCODES, the 1993 population census in Peru, and a...