Understanding the Changes in School Segregation. An Analysis Based on Microdecompositions
Keywords:
Segregation; School choice; Education; Microdecompositions; Uruguay., Segregation, School choice, Education, Microdecompositions, Uruguay
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Abstract
The separation of students from different socioeconomic backgrounds between public and private schools has increased in many countries during the past few years. This article proposes a methodology to decompose changes in school segregation over time and quantify the relative importance of the different factors that may account for these changes. To illustrate its usefulness, the study provides an empirical application to the Uruguayan case, one of the Latin American countries that has experienced the greatest increase in school segregation between public and private schools in recent years. The article finds that changes in preferences for attending school account for a very small fraction of the increase in segregation in Uruguay between 1992 and 2017. In contrast, preferences for attending a private type institution played an important role in the observed change in segregation, particularly in secondary education, while changes in the budget constraint, captured via changes in income, explain most of the observed change in segregation during the period. Despite the limitations of the methodology that are discussed in the article, its use is proposed to enrich the analysis of the determinants of school segregation and help to unravel the relative contribution of different theories that are able to account for the observed changes.
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