IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/idb/brikps/8212.html

Household Education Spending in Latin America and the Caribbean: Evidence from Income and Expenditure Surveys

Author

Listed:
  • Acerenza, Santiago
  • Gandelman, Néstor

Abstract

This paper characterizes household spending in education using microdata from income and expenditure surveys for 12 Latin American and Caribbean countries and the United States. Bahamas, Chile and Mexico have the highest household spending in education while Bolivia, Brazil and Paraguay have the lowest. Tertiary education is the most important form of spending, and most educational spending is performed for individuals 18-23 years old. More educated and richer household heads spend more in the education of household members. Households with both parents present and those with a female main income provider spend more than their counterparts. Urban households also spend more than rural households. On average, education in Latin America and the Caribbean is a luxury good, while it may be a necessity in the United States. No gender bias is found in primary education, but households invest more in females of secondary age and up than same-age males.

Suggested Citation

  • Acerenza, Santiago & Gandelman, Néstor, 2017. "Household Education Spending in Latin America and the Caribbean: Evidence from Income and Expenditure Surveys," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 8212, Inter-American Development Bank.
    • Handle: RePEc:idb:brikps:8212
    DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.18235/0011785
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://publications.iadb.org/publications/english/document/Household-Education-Spending-in-Latin-America-and-the-Caribbean-Evidence-from-Income-and-Expenditure-Surveys.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/http://dx.doi.org/10.18235/0011785?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Acerenza, Santiago & Gandelman, Nestor & Misail, Daniel, 2025. "Neighborhood impacts on human capital accumulation of adolescents and young adults in Montevideo," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 111(C).
    2. Gandelman, Néstor & Serebrisky, Tomás & Suárez-Alemán, Ancor, 2019. "Household spending on transport in Latin America and the Caribbean: A dimension of transport affordability in the region," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 1-1.
    3. Nestor Gandelman & Tomás Serebrisky & Ancor Suárez-Alemán, 2018. "Household spending on transport in Latin America and the Caribbean: understanding transport expenditure patterns," Documentos de Investigación 115, Universidad ORT Uruguay. Facultad de Administración y Ciencias Sociales.
    4. Asmat Ullah & Saba Shaukat & Bilal Tariq, 2022. "Household Socio-Demographic Characteristics and Out of Pocket Educational Expenditure in Pakistan," Journal of Policy Research (JPR), Research Foundation for Humanity (RFH), vol. 8(4), pages 1-7, December.
    5. Garcia-Fuentes, Pablo A. & Lynn Kennedy, P. & Ash, William R., 2025. "The multiple impact of remittances on poverty in developing countries: Direct effects and through human capital," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 47(2), pages 428-447.
    6. Alaimo, Veronica & Cafagna, Gianluca & Elacqua, Gregory & Giles Álvarez, Laura & Izquierdo, Alejandro & Keefer, Philip & Martínez Von der Fecht, Matías & Vuletin, Guillermo & Moreno-Serra, Rodrigo & P, 2018. "Better Spending for Better Lives: How Latin America and the Caribbean Can Do More with Less," IDB Publications (Books), Inter-American Development Bank, number 9152, November.
    7. Van Le, Dao & Tran, Tuyen Quang, 2024. "Economic growth and quality of education: Evidence from the national high school exam in Vietnam," International Journal of Educational Development, Elsevier, vol. 104(C).
    8. Shukla, Prakash Kumar & Reddy A, Bheemeshwar & Kumar, Dushyant, 2024. "Class in caste: Inequalities in human capital investments in children in India," International Journal of Educational Development, Elsevier, vol. 106(C).
    9. Sergio Urzua, 2019. "Redistribution Through Education: The Value of Public Education Spending," Commitment to Equity (CEQ) Working Paper Series 88, Tulane University, Department of Economics.
    10. Evans, David K. & Gale, Charles & Kosec, Katrina, 2023. "The educational impacts of cash transfers in Tanzania," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 92(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • D12 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • I2 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:idb:brikps:8212. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Felipe Herrera Library (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iadbbus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.