To develop a behavioral model of decisions about schooling and work, prepare datasets, and do some preliminary data analysis.
This project uses newly available data from the HLLS (Historia Laboral y Seguridad Social) survey to study the effects of the Chilean school voucher program on education and earnings outcomes, that has been in place in Chile since 1981. School voucher program are currently under consideration in the U.S. and have been tried on a small scale in some U.S. cities. The Chilean experience offers a unique opportunity to learn about the effects of school vouchers implemented on a broad scale. The aim of this project is to develop a behavioral model of decisions about schooling and work, prepare datasets, and do some preliminary data analysis that would support a future application to NICHD. In the behavioral model, parents send young children to private school with some probability that depends on their family characteristics (parents age, education, poverty status, number of siblings) and on whether or not theyare eligible for vouchers. Older children make decisions about whether to attend school, what type of school to attend, and work. A second goal of this project is to explore the use of a new survey currently being administered in Chile to 6000 current and former primary and secondary school teachers and to investigate the potential gains from linking these data to administrative data on test scores.