Essays on education programs in Costa Rica

2014-05-22This dissertation analyzes three different determinants for education in Costa Rica. The study consists of three essays; the first essay evaluates a program designed to expand the skills learned during primary school, the second essay evaluates a program aimed at improving education completion in secondary school, and finally, the third essay studies the existing association between health in early life and education outcomes in adulthood. ❧ The first essay (Chapter 2) assesses the impacts of a program that donates laptop computers to children in public elementary schools in Costa Rica. This initiative aims to improve the quality of the education received by teaching the students to be technologically literate. In collaboration with the NGO implementing the program, we collected baseline and post-intervention information from the 15 primary schools that were treated and from 19 primary schools serving as a control group. From these two sets of schools, we were able to construct a database of approximately 6500 observations and 71 variables. ❧ Using a difference in difference design, this essay estimates the effects of the program on 4 outcomes: computer usage, time allocation, aspirations and test scores. The main finding is that the program leads to an increase in computer use of about 5 hours per week for the treated students. Moreover, this chapter provides evidence that the treated students use the computer for browsing the internet, doing homework, reading and playing games. There is also evidence that the program leads to a decline in the time that students spend on homework and outdoor activities. No evidence is found of the program increasing computer usage by other family members. These results confirm the importance of computer access in low‐income communities in order to promote a more technologically skilled labor force. ❧ The second essay (Chapter 3) evaluates the effects of a conditional cash transfer program that the Costa Rican government introduced in 2007. Following the success of Conditional Cash Transfers Programs in numerous Latin American countries, Costa Rica unraveled its very own program under the name Avancemos. This program was based on giving students’ parents a monthly subsidy, conditional on mandatory school attendance for their children. The data used in this chapter came from a national household survey, which is conducted every year by the Costa Rican Government. This essay empirically tests the hypothesis that the program is improving school completion and consequently reducing dropout rates. The effects of the program on years of school completed are estimated using a difference in difference propensity score matching technique. The main result is that after 2 years of intervention, the conditional subsidy increases the years of school completed of treated students by 0.62 years. No evidence is found regarding impacts of the program on hours worked by eligible adolescents. ❧ The fourth essay (Chapter 4) studies the association between early life health and education and economic outcomes in adult life. This chapter relies on 2 measures of childhood health: a retrospective four‐point scale assessment of health status while growing up, and adult height to the knee, which is known to be a good measure of nutrition and overall health during early ages. The data used in this essay came from the Costa Rican Longevity and Healthy Aging Study, which is a longitudinal study of a nationally representative sample of 2827 adults ages 60 and over. This chapter provides evidence of a strong correlation between early age health and adult education and economic outcomes, for both males and females