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Learning Events Series
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| Poverty & Gender in Latin America and the Caribbean: Learning Events Series |
 "Culture as Learning: The Evolution of Female Labor Force Participation over a Century"
Raquel Fernandez, Professor at the Department of Economics, New York University.  Married women’s labor force participation increased dramatically over the last century. Why this occurred has been the subject of much debate. This paper investigates the role of changes in culture arising from learning in generating this increase. To do so, it develops a dynamic model of culture in which individuals hold heterogeneous beliefs regarding the relative long-run payoffs for women who work in the market versus the home. These beliefs evolve rationally via an intergenerational learning process. Women are assumed to learn about the long-term payoffs of working by observing (noisy) private and public signals. This process generically generates an S-shaped figure for female labor force participation, which is what is found in the data. The S shape results from the dynamics of learning. I calibrate the model to several key statistics and show that it does a good job in replicating the quantitative evolution of female LFP in the US over the last 120 years. The model highlights a new dynamic role for changes in wages via their effect on intergenerational learning. The calibration shows that this role was quantitatively important in several decades.
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. | “Family Planning as an Investment in Female Human Capital” Shareen Joshi, Visiting Professor of International Development, Georgetown University.  The paper analyzes 141 villages in Matlab, Bangladesh from 1974 to 1996, in which half the villages received from 1977 to 1996 an outreach family planning and maternal-child health program. Village and individual data confirm a decline in fertility of about 15 percent in the program villages compared with the control villages, as others have noted. The consequences of the program on a series of long run family welfare outcomes are then estimated in addition to fertility: women’s health, involvement in production other than childcare, household assets, participation in group activities outside of the family, use of preventive health inputs, and finally the inter-generational effects on the health and schooling of the woman’s children. Many of these indicators of the women’s welfare and that of their children improve significantly in conjunction with the program induced decline in fertility, suggesting substantial social returns to this reproductive health program.
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. | “Boys' Underperformance in School” Jyotsna Jha, Advisor, Gender & Education, Commonwealth Secretariat.  The underachievement of boys in education is a subject that raises heated debate and a host of conflicting hypotheses. Three persistent myths surround the subject: (i) That it is about boys versus girls; (ii) That boys’ underachievement results from ‘a war of the sexes’, and that somehow girls and maybe female teachers are responsible for boys falling behind; and (iii) That boys’ achievement at school should be measured against that of girls. These myths are addressed in a recent pan-Commonwealth study that offers a cross-country analysis of different aspects of boys’ underachievement in education covering both performance and attainment. Dr. Jha will present the findings from the study while focusing on Caribbean case studies, and discuss successful practices identified and initial recommendations for policy direction.
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| “Returns to Education: The Gender Perspective” Harry Patrinos, Lead Education Economist (HDNED), The World Bank.  A review of the empirical literature on rates of return to education shows that education is a profitable investment for the individual. Moreover, the social benefits associated with schooling, particularly women’s schooling, suggest that primary schooling investment is a priority. However, low returns to primary schooling for females in developing countries, especially those not yet having achieved universal primary schooling, may be a serious policy concern. To the extent that private rates of return to primary schooling inform family decisions about educating daughters, then action may be needed to ensure that girls’ schooling draws adequate investments.
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