Determinants of health and education in Latin America

Abstract

Abstract. This paper discusses the determinants of health and education in Latin America, a region which we define as consisting of the following twenty countries: Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Suriname, Uruguay, and Venezuela. Health and education are integral factors to the productive capability and overall well-being of individuals. Therefore the factors that contribute to health and education lay the foundation for long-term economic growth that is distributed equitably throughout every socioeconomic stratum. There are a myriad of factors that contribute to the levels of health and the quality of education experienced by individuals living in Latin America; the determinants of health will be organized such that they fall into economic, social and historical, environmental, and biological categories, while the determinants of education will be broken down into student-side, school-level, and system-wide or macro variables. Using a panel of the twenty Latin American countries previously listed, this paper will discuss possible influences of health and education status as well as the nature of that influence; the paper will then proceed to discern between statistically significant and statistically insignificant factors. The paper will conclude with a discussion of possible statistical flaws that could result in biased conclusions. Keywords. Health, Education, Latin America, HIV, Panel data. JEL. I15, I25, C33.