The Impact of Race and Inequality on Human Capital Formation in Latin America During Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

In this chapter we present long-run results on education and educational inequality in Latin America. We analyze the reasons behind the delay of the spread of education in this continent and its relationship with income inequality and race. While the racial composition of the population was behind the low literacy levels obtained during the nineteenth and first part of the twentieth centuries, racial inequality and its impact on education and educational inequality decreased during the last decades of the twentieth century. Nonetheless educational levels lagged behind those of the OECD countries even during the late twentieth century. We also find that the spread of primary and to a lesser extent secondary school during the twentieth century can explain the sharp decrease of educational inequality during the same time period. Nonetheless this diminution of educational inequality did not have any impact on the diminution of income inequality at least during the twentieth century.