Comparative Report: Education and poverty in Latin America

Honduras has the worst record in Latin American education opportunities and access to basic services provided to citizens, said Thursday (06-05-2010) a World Bank report presented in Madrid realize that Latin America still has a large budget deficit development compared to rich countries.
Chile, Uruguay, Costa Rica, Venezuela and Argentina, in order, occupy the first positions in the Human Opportunity Index.
The Human Opportunity Index (HOI) in Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) in 2010, reflects the extent to which personal circumstances affect the probability of the child's access to basic services and the relationship with his success in life.
The report shows that the region has changed with the goal of opening the door for the development of all countries, but at the present rate it will take a generation to be universal access to services such as education, clean water or electricity.
Although the HOI has found improved quality of life in the region, this happened "slowly and with large differences between countries," the study said. Since 1995, growth was 1% per annum, a rate "poor" compared to the countries of Central America.
Latin America will need 37 years to provide universal basic services of education and housing. Currently, the country with the highest HOI is Chile (95%) followed by Uruguay, Mexico, Costa Rica and Venezuela. Argentina, Jamaica, Ecuador, Colombia and Brazil have very peculiar development models. Below the regional average (77) are placed in the Dominican Republic, Paraguay, Panama, Peru, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Honduras (51).
Some countries have excellent services, others not. Jamaica has the largest HOI in education, but is in an intermediate position in LAC. Being registered does not guarantee that the continuation of studies of these children, so one should not understand that children enrolled pure and simply mean that the future will be secured without further monitoring.
COMPARISON WITH DEVELOPED COUNTRIES
By comparing the LAC countries with developed countries in other parts of the world, found that even those who have attained better scores in education, according to the International Student Assessment (PISA) are well below the OECD European countries and U.S. in a worse position in the ranking
The educational level of parents' influence on the child often and the place of birth is the best indicator to predict who will have access to better basic infrastructure.
This difference is due not only to advanced countries to provide more education, but also by the unfair distribution of these services in LAC, where children perform better in PISA tests are the richest.
According to this report there are also many lack of housing, or offer the opportunity to live in houses with sanitation, no crowding or over personal shortcomings. In some countries with a score close to the European average this is due to an uneven distribution in the region since there is no increase supply of housing units that continent.
"If children grow well, the country also grow."
One of the main conclusions is that "personal circumstances also greatly influence the lives of children in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Public policies to address inequalities are the best investment we can make for a country, "said the former president of Chile, Michelle Bachelet, who attended the presentation at the Casa de America in Madrid.

"Despite his efforts in the last decade, Latin American governments have failed to significantly improve the equity".