DEVELOPMENT BULLETIN-LATIN AMERICA: ECLAC Criticises Education ‘Magic Potion’ Concept

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Gustavo Gonzalez

SANTIAGO, May 30 1998 (IPS) - The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) cast aspersions on the regional governments’ view of education as a sort of “magic potion” to cure social equity.

In its report “A Social Panorama of Latin America 1997,” the UN regional agency warned policies for employment, on demography and resourse assignation for the poorest sectors are also essential to remedy income redistribution.

The report, released Wednesday in Santiago thus ended indirect questioning of agreements adopted in the Second Summit of the Americas held in this capital last April and attended by 34 hemisphere leaders.

In this meeting, education was presented as the mainstay of policies to overcome poverty and it was agreed 8.3 billion dollars would be poured into education and training over the next three years.

This funding, mostly aimed at the vulnerable sectors, like indigenous minorities, women and migrants, will be provided by the Interamerican Development Bank, the World Bank and the US Agency for International Development.

The government of Chile, whose President Edouardo Frei proposed education as a key theme of the continental summit, stressed this had been one of the most far-reaching concrete conclusions for the future development of the Americas.

In its social report, ECLAC valued the efforts made on the education and training front, but pointed out the region will not be able to overcome inequity until it corrects the current teaching and employment structures.

The Latin American and Caribbean governments are promoting education as an instrument to create more equal opportunities, but teaching alone is not enough to achieve this objective, said the regional organism.

And the 1997 social balance is still critical, as average economic growth of between 3 and 3.5 percent in the last three years was not sufficient to close the breach between rich and poor.

“The predominant income distribution pattern in the Latin American countries means, in the world ambit, the region will be considered one of the most backward in terms of equity,” read the report presented by ECLAC executive secretary, Colombia’s Jose Antonio Ocampo.

Even with sustained economic growth over the next ten years substantial improvements in income distribution will be difficult if the current structures prevail, added the study.

Ocampo stressed the richest ten percent of the Latin American population take 40 percent of the income, while the poorest 40 percent take only between two and three percent.

The report states stable countries with sustained economic growth over the last three years, like Chile, Brazil and Panama, so a certain degree, managed to reduce their poverty indices.

But neither the Chileans nor Brazilians corrected the high level of inequity in distribution, while other important economies, like Mexico and Argentina, still affected by the 1994- 1995 crisis, did not reduce their percentage of poor.

On the basis of statistics from Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica and Uruguay, the report states professional and technical incomes have increasedby an average of seven percent in recent years, while lower qualified workers only eared 3.5 percent more.

And this precedents supported ECLAC’s warming that higher levels of education or qualification only make income more uneven, a tendency which could be maintained or even accentuated in the next few years.

Hence, education is not enough, if it is not accompanied by job creation policies for the lower income levels and if it does not overcome the current rigidity of the labour market, which affects the poorer sectors.

Demographic policies, linked to aspects like access to housing, and greater access to other resources, like capital and credit, are also indispensible in the war on inequity, said ECLAC.

And the region could achieve more effective income redistribution if policies were brought in on all these fronts, while average annual GDP growth continues at around five percent, according to the report.

The emphasis on education is based on the principle that with better training and qualifications, the poor would be able to improve their opportunities and get better jobs.

But this idea, which confirms the neoliberal principle of the State as the supplier of educational opportunities leaving the market to provide jobs, appears to be deeply questioned in the latest ECLAC report.