THE FAMILY IN FLUX: HOUSEHOLD DECISION-MAKING
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some higher education. Nevertheless, it should be noted that 20 percent of the youngest adult cohort still has only six or fewer years of schooling. These improvements might be strongly associated with improvements in educationrelated public infrastructure and the important rural-urban migration flows that began in the 1950s. One interesting feature of this trend towards a population with higher schooling is that the gap between the education levels of males and females has practically vanished in the country over the past two decades. The average level of schooling has risen faster for females, and they have indeed almost caught up with their male counterparts. For the cohort born in the 1970s, the gender gap is less than 0.5 years. How has the market valued this increasing educational attainment? By gender, returns to higher education among males increase up to 45 years of age and then start decreasing. Returns to primary and secondary education show a downward trend throughout the life cycle. Among females, the pattern of returns to higher education is similar but somewhat more pronounced. The life-cycle pattern of returns to primary education is increasing, while that of secondary education is decreasing. As shown in Figure 2.15, older cohorts have much higher returns than the younger ones for all educational levels. Among females, the same decreasing pattern is observed, except for primary-educated workers, whose returns are constant across cohorts. The reduction in educational premia for younger cohorts may be related to changes in the quality of the educational system as well as to significant increases in educational attainment. The smaller decreasing trend in the cohort effect for the returns to college is consistent with the fact that the supply of college-educated individuals has grown less over the past four decades. The much lower returns to all levels of education for younger cohorts may be related to changes in the quality of the educational system, and/or to the significant increases in educational attainment achieved in the past decades. Normally, the increase in the relative supply of educated workers effect is partially offset by economic growth, as that generates an increase in relative demand. In that sense, the observed decreasing trend would indicate that supply pressures have predominated over the past 50 years. In terms of the labor market, as in other Latin American countries the main change is that female participation has increased dramatically, and this change is closely associated with the fertility declines and improved education