ESCAPING THE POVERTY TRAP IN LATIN AMERICA: THE ROLE OF FAMILY FACTORS

Much like an inherited trait, poverty trends to pass from parent to child. How prevalent is this "curse of the poor," why do some escape it, and how can we help improve the odds? This study sets out to gauge the extent of this "Intergenerational transmission of poverty" (ITP) in...

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Autores principales:	ALDAZ-CARROLL,ENRIQUE, MORAN,RICARDO
Lenguaje:	English
Publicado:	Instituto de Economía, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile 2001
Materias:	Household Behavior and Family Economics Education Welfare and Poverty Urban Rural and Regional Economics Household Analysis
Acceso en línea:	http://www.scielo.cl/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0717-68212001011400003
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spelling	oai:scielo:S0717-682120010114000032002-01-21ESCAPING THE POVERTY TRAP IN LATIN AMERICA: THE ROLE OF FAMILY FACTORSALDAZ-CARROLL,ENRIQUEMORAN,RICARDO Household Behavior and Family Economics Education Welfare and Poverty Urban Rural and Regional Economics Household Analysis Much like an inherited trait, poverty trends to pass from parent to child. How prevalent is this "curse of the poor," why do some escape it, and how can we help improve the odds? This study sets out to gauge the extent of this "Intergenerational transmission of poverty" (ITP) in 16 Latin American countries, analyze certain factors affecting it, and raise policy considerations. Among the various a priori determinants of ITP, the study focuses on "family factors" - those more closely related to characteristics of the household, such as mother's schooling, than to its economic and social environment. The empirical results indicate that the prevalence of ITP in Latin America is strong and that family factors play an important role in the educational achievement of poor children - and hence on their expected lifetime income. Regressions for 16 Latin American countries show that children in poverty with fewer siblings, more educated parents, higher household income, and living in urban areas are significantly more likely to complete secondary education. Completion of secondary education is taken as the threshold level of schooling at or above which a child of poverty should have a fair chance of escaping the poverty cycle in the 21st century. Results for the subset of countries with the required data further show that children of the poor born to single adolescent mothers, or who did not attend a preschool program, or were undernourished, are less likely to complete secondary education than children of the poor without the corresponding attributes. Moreover, supplementary data reviewed for this study, but that could not be adequately indexed for the regressions, tend to support findings by other researchers pointing to two additional family factors affecting educational performance among children from poor households: domestic violence and ethnicity. Study results suggest that poverty-reduction strategies take into account family factors much more than is commonly the case, especially in complement to the supply of education and other basic social services that are so greatly emphasized today. As corollary, we recommend that such social services should, whenever possible, focus on the undereducated households in poverty, rather than on their members individually, to improve their children's education outcomes and thereby increase their chances of breaking out of the cycle of intergenerational poverty.info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccessInstituto de Economía, Pontificia Universidad Católica de ChileCuadernos de economía v.38 n.114 20012001-08-01text/htmlhttp://www.scielo.cl/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0717-68212001011400003en10.4067/S0717-68212001011400003
institution	Scielo Chile
collection	Scielo Chile
language	English
topic	Household Behavior and Family Economics Education Welfare and Poverty Urban Rural and Regional Economics Household Analysis
spellingShingle	Household Behavior and Family Economics Education Welfare and Poverty Urban Rural and Regional Economics Household Analysis ALDAZ-CARROLL,ENRIQUE MORAN,RICARDO ESCAPING THE POVERTY TRAP IN LATIN AMERICA: THE ROLE OF FAMILY FACTORS
description	Much like an inherited trait, poverty trends to pass from parent to child. How prevalent is this "curse of the poor," why do some escape it, and how can we help improve the odds? This study sets out to gauge the extent of this "Intergenerational transmission of poverty" (ITP) in 16 Latin American countries, analyze certain factors affecting it, and raise policy considerations. Among the various a priori determinants of ITP, the study focuses on "family factors" - those more closely related to characteristics of the household, such as mother's schooling, than to its economic and social environment. The empirical results indicate that the prevalence of ITP in Latin America is strong and that family factors play an important role in the educational achievement of poor children - and hence on their expected lifetime income. Regressions for 16 Latin American countries show that children in poverty with fewer siblings, more educated parents, higher household income, and living in urban areas are significantly more likely to complete secondary education. Completion of secondary education is taken as the threshold level of schooling at or above which a child of poverty should have a fair chance of escaping the poverty cycle in the 21st century. Results for the subset of countries with the required data further show that children of the poor born to single adolescent mothers, or who did not attend a preschool program, or were undernourished, are less likely to complete secondary education than children of the poor without the corresponding attributes. Moreover, supplementary data reviewed for this study, but that could not be adequately indexed for the regressions, tend to support findings by other researchers pointing to two additional family factors affecting educational performance among children from poor households: domestic violence and ethnicity. Study results suggest that poverty-reduction strategies take into account family factors much more than is commonly the case, especially in complement to the supply of education and other basic social services that are so greatly emphasized today. As corollary, we recommend that such social services should, whenever possible, focus on the undereducated households in poverty, rather than on their members individually, to improve their children's education outcomes and thereby increase their chances of breaking out of the cycle of intergenerational poverty.
author	ALDAZ-CARROLL,ENRIQUE MORAN,RICARDO
author_facet	ALDAZ-CARROLL,ENRIQUE MORAN,RICARDO
author_sort	ALDAZ-CARROLL,ENRIQUE
title	ESCAPING THE POVERTY TRAP IN LATIN AMERICA: THE ROLE OF FAMILY FACTORS
title_short	ESCAPING THE POVERTY TRAP IN LATIN AMERICA: THE ROLE OF FAMILY FACTORS
title_full	ESCAPING THE POVERTY TRAP IN LATIN AMERICA: THE ROLE OF FAMILY FACTORS
title_fullStr	ESCAPING THE POVERTY TRAP IN LATIN AMERICA: THE ROLE OF FAMILY FACTORS
title_full_unstemmed	ESCAPING THE POVERTY TRAP IN LATIN AMERICA: THE ROLE OF FAMILY FACTORS
title_sort	escaping the poverty trap in latin america: the role of family factors
publisher	Instituto de Economía, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
publishDate	2001
url	http://www.scielo.cl/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0717-68212001011400003
work_keys_str_mv	AT aldazcarrollenrique escapingthepovertytrapinlatinamericatheroleoffamilyfactors AT moranricardo escapingthepovertytrapinlatinamericatheroleoffamilyfactors
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ESCAPING THE POVERTY TRAP IN LATIN AMERICA: THE ROLE OF FAMILY FACTORS

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