Abstract

LEVY, Santiago  and  SZEKELY, Miguel. More Schooling, Less Informality? A Cohort Analysis for Mexico and Latin America. El trimestre econ [online]. 2016, vol.83, n.332, pp.499-548. ISSN 2448-718X.  https://doi.org/10.20430/ete.v83i332.232.

What is the relation between schooling progress and informal employment? Using household surveys from Mexico and 17 other Latin American countries, we separate the trend in the rate of informal employment into three effects: i) differences in years of education of successive generations of workers; ii) transitions between formality and informality during the working life of each generation; and iii) labor market characteristics. We find that in Latin America there has been a slight reduction in labor informality, associated mainly with the first effect: recent generations of workers with more schooling have lower informality rates than previous ones. In the case of Mexico we also observe that younger generations of workers have more years of schooling than previous ones; however, this has not translated into lower informal employment due to adverse labor market characteristics. Thus, even though Mexico has experienced faster educational progress than the average of the region, its progress in reducing informality has been nil.

Keywords : informality; schoding; labor market; cohort effects; comparative analysis; Mexico vs. Latin America.

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