The Expansion of Mass Education in Twentieth Century Latin America: A Global Comparative Perspective

Abstract

This paper studies the expansion of mass education in Latin America in the twentieth century from a global comparative perspective. The paper argues that expansion in terms of enrolment and attainment levels was quite impressive. A comparative analysis of the grade enrolment distribution demonstrates, however, that the rapid expansion of primary school enrolment did not correspond with an equally impressive improvement in educational quality. The persistently large tertiary education bias in public education spending suggests that part of the poor quality performance is related to a lack of fiscal support for primary education and that the political economy explanation for educational underdevelopment, as advanced by Engerman, Mariscal and Sokoloff for the 19 th century, still applied to Latin America during most of the 20 th century. Keywords RESUMENEste artículo estudia la expansión de la enseñanza básica en América Latina durante el siglo XX desde una perspectiva mundial y comparativa. El trabajo argumenta que los niveles y la expansión, en términos de matrícula, fue bastante notable. Sin embargo, el análisis comparativo del grado de distribución de la matrícula demuestra que dicha expansión no se corresponde con mejoras equivalentes en la calidad de la educación. El persistente sesgo del gasto público en educación terciaria sugiere que la explicación de su baja calidad está relacionada con las carencias del financiamiento público de la educación primaria. Esto implica que la tesis de economía política sobre el subdesarrollo educativo de América Latina que proponen Engerman, Mariscal y Sokoloff para el siglo XIX, se mantiene durante la mayor parte del siglo XX.Palabras clave: educación, América Latina, distribución de la matrícu-la, gasto público

Agrarian Structures, Urbanization, and Inequality

“…The power inequality secures the existence of the inegalitarian agrarian structure (De Janvry, 1981). Similar structures are observed in some regions of sub-Saharan Africa (Frankema, 2010).…”

“…The impact of land inequality on urban distribution has been examined in several prior studies (Engerman and Sokoloff, 2002;Galor and Zeira, 1993;Galor and Tsiddon, 1996;Galor, Moav and Vollrath, 2004;Bourguignon and Verdier, 2000;Frankema, 2009;Wegenast, 2009). These studies focus on institutions, pointing out in particular that greater wealth inequality would lead to institutions that bias education capabilities and policies against the poor.…”

Natural Resources Curse in the Long Run? Bolivia, Chile and Peru in the Nordic Countries’ Mirror

“…Likewise, despite some improvements during the 20th Century, it has been suggested that these changes were not enough in terms of the quantity and equity of public spending and not outstanding from an international perspective [108,109]. In the Chilean case, for instance, it was only in 1920, more than a century after independence, that compulsory primary education was introduced.…”

Natural Resources Curse in the long run? Bolivia, Chile and Peru in the Nordic countries’ mirror

“…[108] Likewise, despite some improvements during the 20th century, it has been suggested that these changes were not enough in terms of the quantity and equity of public spending and not outstanding from an international perspective. [109,110] In the Chilean case, for instance, it was only in 1920, more than a century after independence, that compulsory primary education was introduced. As late as the 1950s, approximately 9% of the school age population never attended school; 30% of those who entered the first grade abandoned school within the first two years and only 28.6% of the school age population completed their primary education.…”