Browsing by Author "Arias, Omar S."

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    Higher education decisions in Peru: on the role of financial constraints, skills, and family background
    (Universidad del Pacífico. Centro de Investigación, 2011-12) Castro, Juan Francisco; Yamada Fukusaki, Gustavo; Arias, Omar S.
    This paper analyzes the relative importance of short term financial constraints vis a vis skills and other background factors affecting schooling decisions when explaining access to higher education in Peru. We focus on college access disparities between rich and poor households. We use a novel household survey that includes special tests to measure cognitive and non-cognitive skills of the urban population age 14-50. These are complemented with retrospective data on basic education and family socioeconomic conditions in a multinomial model. We find that strong correlation between college enrollment and family income in urban Peru is not only driven by credit constraints, but also by poor college readiness in terms of cognitive skills and by poor family and educational backgrounds affecting preferences for schooling. Family income explains, at most, half of the college access gap between poor and non-poor households. The other half is related to differences in parental education, educational background and cognitive skills. Our results indicate that credit and/or scholarship schemes alone will not suffice to change the regressive nature of higher education enrollment in Peru, and that such programs will face strong equity-efficiency trade-offs.
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    Los retornos de las habilidades cognitivas y socioemocionales en el Perú (Capítulo)
    (Universidad del Pacífico, 2016) Díaz, Juan José; Arias, Omar S.; Vera Tudela, David
    Capítulo 8 de libro “Productividad en el Perú : medición, determinantes e implicancias“. El presente estudio proporciona las primeras estimaciones de los retornos de las habilidades cognitivas y socioemocionales para la población urbana en edad de trabajar en el Perú. Del análisis empírico, se encuentra que los trabajadores con habilidad cognitiva alta (una desviación estándar superior al promedio) perciben ingresos por hora medios aproximadamente 9% más altos, condicionados por variaciones exógenas en el nivel de escolarización. El rendimiento estimado de un año de escolaridad, en presencia de habilidades, equivale a un incremento de los ingresos por hora de 15%. Los retornos de las habilidades socioemocionales son igualmente positivos.