Educational Gap and Family Structure in Uruguay

In this paper we use household survey data to study the determinants of children’s educational achievement in Uruguay. As an indicator of this educational achievement, we build the “educational gap” which is the difference between expected years of schooling of a child and actual years of schooling. Among the determinants, we introduce indicators of family environment, focusing on the impact of the parents’ marital status on their children educational attainment. In particular, the results suggest positive infuence of having married parents on daughter’s educational outcomes, after controlling for household background variables such as parents’ education, income percapita, wealth and number of children