A territorial approach to assess children´s opportunities in Latin American Countries

This paper documented the overall improvement in living conditions and equality of opportunity in several LAC countries. However, huge disparities within as well as across countries remain. The Human Opportunity Index (HOI) for the analyzed advantages ranges from almost universal coverage for school attendance and electricity in Chile and Mexico to very low HOI levels for sewerage and housing conditions in Nicaragua. For all advantages and countries, more recent levels of HOI showed significant improvements in comparison to previous censuses’ levels. This paper opens the territorial “black box†by assessing the importance of territorial variables vis a vis personal and households´ circumstances in determining the inequality of distribution of each advantage. In almost every case, in explaining access to advantages, territorial circumstances appeared to be more important than the individuals´ ones (sex and ethnic origin of the child). Territorial variables were the most important determinant for supply-driven advantages (i.e. public services), whereas their importance is slightly lower for advantages that are more closely linked to the demand-side (quality of housing material) or to both sides (schooling). Among territorial characteristics, in almost all cases the most influential ones were those linked to the geography (density and rural/urban condition), followed by those linked to human capital (illiteracy rate and the migratory capital of territories). Institutional proxies (ethnic fragmentation, political participation) and variables linked to the economic structure (employment concentration, main activities) appeared to have a lower impact. All things considered, the paper points to the still long road ahead to provide equality of opportunity for the youth within each country. In this scenario, the territory imposes important access restrictions for all the advantages studied, in some cases representing more than 50% of the total inequality. As a general result, the importance of the territory calls for placebased policies as a tool for achieving equity in access.