DEVELOPMENT-COSTA RICA: Education and Democracy Still a Challenge

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Néfer Muñoz

SAN JOSE, Oct 30 1999 (IPS) - Costa Rica’s big challenge, after six decades of major social achievements, is to reverse the backsliding of its education and democracy, says a report by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

The fifth annual report on the State of the Nation in Sustainable Human Development affirms that this country has its high and low points. Costa Rica provides its population with adequate basic services, but the principal social indicators show negative growth, according to the study.

The UNDP says the country’s weak points are most evident in education. “For years the predominant opinion was that this was an educated country, but now we discover that it is barely literate,” said Miguel Gutiérrez, director of the study.

Traditionally considered Central America’s most advanced country in terms of education, Costa Rica currently has fewer secondary school students than other nations in the region, such as Panama and El Salvador.

In Costa Rica, 50 percent of secondary school-aged youth regularly attend school, while in El Salvador the rate is 59 percent, and Panama reaches 67 percent.

Another fact that worries researchers is that of the Costa Rican children who begin primary school just 18 percent go on to study at the university level.

“This trend shows that the country is losing its educational leadership in the region” and in Latin America, said Gutiérrez.

To explain the phenomenon, the study points to the disparities between public and private, rural and urban education, and to deteriorating infrastructure, such as classrooms, equipment and libraries.

Although the UNDP’s 1998 Human Development Report included Costa Rica on its list of highly developed nations, Gutiérrez warned that the situation could change in coming years.

The Human Development Report, which measures the general state of 174 countries in terms of life expectancy, education level and real income, ranked Costa Rica at number 45 last year – an 11- place drop from the previous year.

Isabel Román, a researcher for the study, explained that Costa Rica has many obstacles that make it difficult to study the nation’s social characteristics. For example, the most recent census was taken in 1984 and conditions since then have changed considerably.

The UNDP’s State of the Nation report, released Monday in San Jose, states that improving the quality of democracy is another major challenge for Costa Rica. In 1998, the government of Miguel Angel Rodríguez created new channels for citizen participation, but last year’s presidential elections revealed negative trends.

The disrepute of politicians in the eyes of the public, and the lack of young people’s interest in the electoral process – reflected in high rates of voter abstention – , are evidence of the problem, affirms the study.

The report also points to Costa Rica’s disproportionate political representation, saying traditional parties monopolise power.

“The minority parties would be able to obtain greater representation in parliament if modifications were made in the system for designating the number of seats,” says the report.

Despite the negative trends in education and democracy, the study shows important advances, such as reducing poverty. The percentage of families living below the poverty line was 50 percent in 1960, and fell to 20 percent by 1998.

But a cause for concern, say the researchers, is that the total income of the wealthiest 20 percent of Costa Rica’s population is currently 12.6 times greater than the income of the poorest 20 percent.

“We have reached the conclusion that Costa Rica must take risks and experiment with different and innovative solutions that allow the country to improve its development indicators,” stated Gutiérrez.

The study has been conducted every year since 1994. This year’s report was supported by the UNDP, Costa Rica’s Citizen Ombudsman Office, the European Union, the Bilateral Agreement on Sustainable Development Costa Rica-Holland, and the National Rectors Council of Costa Rica.