Critical Choices at a Critical Age: Youth Emancipation Paths and School Attainment in Latin America

This paper is about how young people become adults in Latin America and how that process affects educational attainment. Through the study of four countries that represent three levels of development we show that educational attainment of individuals is closely linked to the decisions that young people make regarding adult roles or what we call their emancipation patterns. We document the differences that countries have regarding the age at which young people start working, marry and leave the educational system. Through factor and hazard analyses we further show how this dimensions vary according to gender and income within countries and how they affect the chances that they will remain in the educational system. Findings indicate that countries development levels strongly affect the modal ages at which people become adults, rushing the process in low development countries and delaying it the higher we move into development stages. Secondly, within countries we find that males and females present distinct risk factors regarding educational attainment; public roles (work) increase the risk of drop-out for men and private roles (marriage) increase this risk for women. In addition and as expected lower income groups are more at risk and present earlier adoption of adult values than higher income groups. The interrelation of income and gender operate differently in emancipation patterns and in how public and private adult roles affect the chances of remaining in the educational system. While for women a higher socioeconomic status as measured by household educational climate and income decrease the risk that marriage has on dropping out, for men these same values increase their risk of leaving the system when they start working. Overall the paper confirms our central hypothesis. In order to increase educational attainment the sequence and timing of adult role adoption have to be factored into policies, or in other words demand problems have to be endogenized into supply solutions. Also and given the relation between contextual, family, individual background variables and emancipation patterns the room for maneuver is rather limited. High development countries show two possible routes for increasing educational attainment for less developed ones. Uruguay represents a case in which modern gender roles and the compatibility between work and education contribute to relatively high aggregate levels of school attainment. Yet school retention at early ages is low leading eventually to the creation of a group of youth with extremely negative emancipation patterns and low school attainment. Chile represents the other route. High retention rates at early ages based both on positive market signs to educational credentials and expanded efforts on the supply side, combine with a strong stratification segmentation in older cohorts. This leads to a more stratified pattern of school attainment but one that provides for each strata the basic tools for successfully entering adult life. Also traditional gender roles, while they do not negatively affect school attainment, they do limit the return to that educational investment for women, since they enter the labor market far less than their Uruguayan peers.