Inequality between indigenous and non Indigenous in Education: Colombian Case

Ivan Bornacelly 200610636 July 2010

Abstract This document shows the differences in education between those who are indigenous or not, modeled by a probit that evaluates the likelihood of school attending where observable characteristics of the study population are given. At the same time recognizes the importance of factors such as parental education and basing location in papers seen in the kind of group inequality. The research gives the expected effects according to the literature view and at the same time it compares with the chart analysis.

Introduction In Colombia as in the rest of Latinoamerica there is a high level of inequality. The economic situation of the country is a strong determinant of this variable. The fact that 46% of Colombian population is poor and 17.8%1 is under poverty threshold (indigence) determines the effects that have produced the lack of solid institutions and a stable social policy about distribution and concentration of income. In this context, there is a greater incidence of these effects on social and cultural minorities as indigenous, maintaining over the time and in a consistent way. According to the UNDP report2, Colombia is part of the fifteen most unequal countries in the world confirming the barriers in education, employment and infrastructure. Opportunity inequality across regions and ethnic groups persist, and it intensifies when we control for variables such as age and gender. Indigenous, compared to general population who does not belong to any ethnic group, present certain characteristics that prevent their complete insertion into social development and limit their adaptability in the education system and therefore in formal labormarket. When there is a recession ethnic groups are the most affected and when there is a boom there is no a favorable change or significant in their welfare, consequently their stagnation could be consider stable and, as we have seen historically, persistent. Colombia is one of the countries with more indigenous population in the Andean region. 3.37% of the population is indigenous, compared to 84.15% that is not. Of the total indigenous population, just 27.90% goes to an educational institution, while 33.16% of total population on average is register as attending one of these institutions. Moreover, within minorities and the rest of the population, indigenous have the least proportion of people who studies, which stresses this population is left behind, specifically in areas such as education (see graph 1) 3. One of the factors that plays a main role on this divergence is the small amount of investment in rural education because the great majority of indigenous live in these areas. According to the MEN4, during the period of 1993 and 1997 investments on average in education of all departments in the country were assign 65% to urban areas and 35% to rural areas5. Nevertheless, in 2010, the same entity mentions that the expenditure per capita in rural education is 37.3% higher than the expenditure on urban areas with the purpose of the inclusion of more students to education in rural areas. Yet, with this progress in education, the coverage and quality of education is
1 2

Observatorio de Reduccin de la Pobreza y Desigualdad (2008) th Website checked (28 july) http://www.undp.org/poverty/ 3 DANE Censo Ampliado 2005 4 Ministry of Education. In Spanish, Ministerio de Educacin Nacional. 5 Ibid

restricted, which leads indigenous population to have a poor performance in primary and secondary education, restricting their access to higher education, insertion into the labormarket and hence their possibility of obtaining an income. According to Trivelli (2008), indigenous have lower levels of education and worse school performance than the not indigenous population. Trivelli also mentions that these differences are accentuated because of access problems and educational achievement. This last factor refers to the fact that indigenous children have a higher probability of repeating a school year (retention rate) and at the same time they have higher drop-out rates. Problems of infrastructure y the lack of tools are a limitation in education for this population. The fact that there are problems with the structure of rural education (multigrade school y one-teacher) and in the particular case of indigenous groups, the not well-handle coexistence among cultures6 inhibit also education. On the other hand, the access to secondary education is a basic element to determine the level of education that is acceptable, however, this is restricted by geographic conditions and the location. In addition, the insertion to higher education is biased and produces greater benefits for not indigenous and urban population. Given this situation, what I am trying to do in this document is to analyze teorically the main elements that characterize the persistence of inequality among social a cultural groups, emphasizing on the role of family backgrounds and geographic location on the level of education of a specific group that in this case is indigenous population in Colombia. This is what the first part is about. The next section presents the data used on this paper and it makes a statistical description of education for indigenous population in Colombia, observing the factors of divergence between indigenous and not indigenous population. A probit model is introduced in the third section with the purpose of answering which are the elements or variables that determine a higher probability that indigenous enter into education. Finally, results are presented and some policy proposals are mentioned that facilitate the access of indigenous groups to education. Literature Review In his paper, Loury (1977) refers to racial discrimination as one of the factors that leads to opportunity inequality and therefore economic inequality. However, he asserts that racial income differences will persist because family and community backgrounds exert a big influence in individuals ability to get skills valued by labor market. This means that parental status plays an important role in childs opportunity to get marketable
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In Spanish the term refers to interculturalidad.

skills. It has been found that controlling for the quality and the quantity of human capital, whites earn more than blacks, which implies that there are other factors, different that the ones that economic theory has been studying that explain income differences between blacks and whites7. Some authors have asseverate that discrimination against black is one of the main reasons for income differentials. This fact entails that market preferences for whites, assuming identical skills in both groups, lead to differential in returns8. Nevertheless, there are also some socioeconomic factors that explain this differentials and thay have not been studied by traditional economics. Some of these variables are social class, racial background and family background (parents ocupation and education). Parental economic achivement can have an impact on the quality of childrens education if the quality of schools is positively related to communitys wealth. The socioeconomic status of the parents has also an impact on individuals achivement since career and job opportunities depend on this. In that respect, James Montgomery (1991) develops his paper arguing that social structure must be taken into account in the economic analysis because it plays an important role in labormarket outcomes. Some authors argue that many workers find jobs through friends and acquaintances. In his model, best connected workers perform better than poorly connected workers. He also finds that changes in social structure modify income distribution9. That is the case of India, where the political independence led to a change in the distribution between different social groups. Sethi y Somanathan (2010) affirm that the castes underwent a greater mobility than the tribes, in part because of the location of these groups, tribes are usually located in isolated parts, and the political activity of the castes they co-habit, tribal parties have limited political success. The different performance of these two groups is shown in areas like education and employment, where castes gained more than the tribes10. According to Bowles, Loury and Sethi (2010) some contemporary group inequality can be trace to historical oppression as well as hierarchical economic orders11. In their model they assume that there is no discrimination, a channel which is able to maintain
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Loury, Glenn C. (1977). A Dynamic Theory of Racial Income Differences. In Women, Minorities and Employment Discrimination, edited by Phyllis Wallace and Annette LaMond. 8 Ibid. 9 Montgomery, James (1991). Social Networks and Labor Market Outcomes: Toward an Economic Analysis. American Economic Review 81: 1408-18. 10 Sethi, Rajiv and Rohini Somanathan (2010). "Group Identity and Social Mobility." Unpublished Manuscript, Barnard College, Columbia University. 11 Bowles, Samuel, Glenn C. Loury and Rajiv Sethi (2010) Group Inequality. Unpublished Manuscript, Barnard College, Columbia University.

group inequality across generations, and find that economic inequality between social groups can arise without any pre-existence of discrimination. They discover that if social segregation is sufficiently great group inequality will persist over the time. As we have seen with the previous review of literature we have observe that some groups of the population, like blacks and tribes, are still lagged behind regarding to some other groups who have more access to education and labormarket opportunities. We observe that factors like family and community backgrounds, parental economic achievement, social class and structure, discrimination and the location of these groups, as well as historical oppression, play an essential role in determining the probability of a group to succeed in terms of labormarket outcomes. In this paper I address what factors determine the probability of an indigenous to enroll into education and therefore determine the consequences of his o her insertion into education in labour situation and prove if these factors contribute to the persistence of inequality between indigenous and nor indigenous. The Data The data used in this analysis come from the National Administrative Department of Statistics (DANE in Spanish) and from the Household Survey (HS) August December 2006. The HS is a rich panel study containing detailed information on the earnings, occupation, family characteristics, and education of people. It is important to bear in mind that we only consider population self-ascribed as afro-descendant or as indigenous, but for this paper Im going to concentrate in native people. The discrete outcome variables in this case will estudio. This is set equal to one if individual i is attending to any private or public school, college, university or technological institution, and otherwise set to zero. The covariates used in this analysis include indicators denoting if the respondents mother and father attended college or any type of educative institution (ed_padres), real family income (ingresos) and if the family had received any subsidy (subsidio) from programs created by the government as Familias en Accin or any scholarship (Beca) seen for this paper as an special treatment given by the school for any minority group which for this case are the native people. We restrict our sample to people who are between 5 and 65 years of age and who have a complete set of covariates. After discarding incomplete observations, the data used in this analysis consists 216,090 observations for indigenous, 798,450 observations for afro-Colombians, 895 observations for rom (according with the survey is Gitano in Spanish or gipsy) and 9,463,701 observations for any other. I grouped the last three groups as a non-indigenous because of the paper approach.

Taking in to account the preliminary work that is developing Pea-Wills (2010) about Ethnic Earnings Gap in Colombia, I based on the education distributions between groups that they made. They built nine educational categories: none (workers with no completed years of education) primary (one to five completed years of education), basic secondary (six to nine completed years of education), secondary (10 to 11 completed years of education), incomplete tertiary (tertiary education without diploma). With this classification I also can evaluated the probability for native people to enter for each educational level presented. Comparison Chart Analysis Below are some graphs that shows the lag experienced by the indigenous population in terms of education.

School Attendance
% School Attendance 86.39%

3.36%

0.01%

10.24% Black Other

Indgenous Gypsy/Rom

% Indigenous School Attendance

Education level 3.72% 2.76% 1.88% 1.52% 1.33% 0.72% Tertiary 0.63% Post

Preschool

Primary

Basic Secondary Tecnichal Secondary Secundary

% Attendance
Public school Private School
84.84% 91.20%

3.26% 0.78%

0.01% 0.03%

11.90% 7.99%

Indigenous Gypsy/Rom

Black

Other

The Econometric Model In this work I implemented a probit model with the aim of finding which variables affect the probability that an Indigenous has to enter or not to the education sector. The probit is shown below:

Where the is a matrix with differences explanatory variables which will change according to the analysis that will be applied. Among the variables studied are parents education, income, subsidy, scholarship. Also the model will be taking in to account variables as gender (mujer), location (cabecera) which is set equal to one if the individual lives outside the city (rural zone) or zero otherwise, and indigenous (indigena). In this paper I will be changing the independent variable for the three of the nine educational categories presented before: primary education, basic secondary education and secondary education. With this we can analyze which variables can affect the probability of study of the indigenous in each educational level. Results According to the table presented below, the likelihood of attendance at an educational institution can be conditioned if a person is considered a native or not. The first model is generally raised if parental education, income, and subsidies have an impact on the likelihood of studying for the entire study population, ie without discrimination on minorities. As shown in the results, the fact that parents do have studied (in this case, at least basic education), increases the probability of school attendance. The income level increases the probability of studying by discriminating on the variable "indigena" or not. Likewise if they receive a subsidy or not from any governmental program. In the second model can be noted that Indigenous people can generate a decrease in the probability of school attendance. This can be explained by the variables that accompany this same model as the location (The greater distance of the schools were less likely to attend). To the natives is more evident the previous point since they are generally located in rural areas or outside the cities. The third model would emphasize the discriminatory features and shows its effect on the probability of entering or attending an educational institution. Obviously the results are as expected. The fact that one person is female, lives in rural area, or is native, negatively affects this probability. It may be noted to be native to or live in rural areas is 12 and 13 percentage points lower chance of admission to a school than nonIndigenous and those who are located in urban areas respectively.
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(1) VARIABLES ed_padres parents education Ingresos income subsidio subsidy becas sholarship mujer woman cabecera indigena native Constant Observations 0.262*** (0.044) 0.078** (0.056) 0.021** (0.011)

Tabla 1 Dependent variable: (2) Y 0.194*** (0.064) 0.056*** (0.006)

(3) Y 0.215*** (0.036)

(4) Y

0.012** (0.09) -0.015 (0.041) -0.032* -0.081* (0.019) (0.037) -0.129* -0.138** (0.064) (0.055) -0.113* -0.121* (0.053) (0.066) 0.600** 0.735*** 0.564*** (0.243) (0.040) (0.096) 10.579.136 10.579.136 10.579.136 0.060 0.140 0.382 Standard error in parentheses ***p<0.01 **p<0.05 *p<0.1

0.025** (0.014) 0.017 (0.090)

0.084* (0.077) 0.544*** (0.098) 10.579.136 0.383

The latest model shows the effect of affirmative action on the indigenous. According to the ministry of national education, all public institutions must have a percentage of students belonging to groups that are minorities. Grants and scholarships are provided by the government aid to facilitate the entry of these groups at primary, secondary and tertiary education. Likewise, success discounts, transportation and other benefits that encourage pre-sold attendance. But according to the results of this fourth model, the scholarships are not generating the expected effect on the indigenous population. This can be explained by the lack of information and communication of the various programs and grants offered by the government. These groups do not have access to this information. Nevertheless, we may redeem the fact that the subsidies provided by the programs as "familias en accin" do they are generated in part a positive effect on the likelihood of study for this group.

VARIABLES ed_padres parents education Ingresos income subsidio subsidy becas sholarship mujer woman cabecera rural indigena native Constant Observations

(1) Primary Education 0.301** (0.102) 0.092* (0.056) 0.031* (0.011) 0.011 (0.241) -0.025* (0.017) -0.124* (0.088) -0.098* (0.047) 0.862** (0.034) 10.579.136 0.250

(2) Basic Secondary Education 0.212*** (0.064) 0.071*** (0.006) 0.047** (0.09) 0.019 (0.091) -0.027* (0.016) -0.139* (0.054) -0.103* (0.078) 0.793*** (0.089) 10.579.136 0.189

(3) Secondary Education 0.126** (0.036) 0.041*** (0.006) 0.089 (0.175) 0.019 (0.091) -0.022* (0.012) -0.145** (0.075) -0.143** (0.082) 0.941*** (0.043) 10.579.136 0.257

Finally, a model was developed by changing the dependent variable. In the first case, was taken as the dependent variable assistance to primary education. This had less impact with respect to the independent variables mentioned above. The fact that a student attends or not to primary education has a significant dependence whether they are indigenous or not, whether they have fellowship. However, if the parents are educated and if they are located in rural areas do generate a significant positive and negative effect respectively on the probability of school attendance. In cases of basic secondary education (6-9) and secondary education (10-11) is greater the impact of independent variables taken. Indigenous or not, male or female generates negative effects on the probability of school attendance. The grants are losing impact on the probability of school attendance as programs such as "familias en accion" are aimed primarily at lower age groups.

Conclusion This paper developed an econometric model (probit) in order to know the incidence of the fact of belonging to a minority on the likelihood of school attendance. We also took into account other characteristics that positively or negatively affect this probability. I focused mainly on indigenous groups in order to examine the implications of their status on the likelihood of school attendance. In accordance with the results, there is discrimination in the study group. This can be evidenced by the variable that shows if the person is indigenous has a lower probability of attending a school. According to what discussed in the paper of Sethi, Rajiv and Rohini Somanathan (2010), and Bowles, Samuel, Glenn C. Loury and Rajiv Sethi (2010), these results can be explained by low parental education, location of household (rural or urban) and family background. In general it can be argued that the conditions for the integration of education for indigenous people is limited and it is not the most favorable. Government policies favoring small proportion of children under 11 years while those who attend secondary school are not receiving the benefits that encourage school attendance. Although, the cultural conditions of indigenous groups may limit their access to education within their own criteria or belief system, every time the percentage of Indians come to be part of the economically active population and unfortunate mind to be part group of unemployed. For this reason these groups (minorities) should continue being studied to know their status against the country's economy and likewise taken into account in the implementation of public policies. References

Montgomery, James (1991). Social Networks and Labor Market Outcomes: Toward an Economic Analysis. American Economic Review 81: 1408-18. Sethi, Rajiv and Rohini Somanathan (2010). "Group Identity and Social Mobility." Unpublished Manuscript, Barnard College, Columbia University Bowles, Samuel, Glenn C. Loury and Rajiv Sethi (2010) Group Inequality. Unpublished Manuscript, Barnard College, Columbia University. Pea, Ximena and Daniel Wills (2010) Ethnic Earnings Gap in Colombia Unpubished Manuscript, Universidad de los Andes Trivelli, Carolina (2008) La persistencia de la Desigualdad entre indgenas y no indgenas en Amrica Latina. Rimisp Centro Latinoamericano para el Desarrollo Rur. Chile
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