How Much Effort Do Governments in Latin America Make in Education?
As an indicator of government support for education, I examined the percentage of education expenditures relative to all public expenditures. This indicator suggests that the governments of Latin America make efforts that are comparable, in relative terms, to those of governments in other regions. This is paradoxical given the fact that we have seen how, in absolute terms, spending per pupil in Latin America is smaller than in any other region. This paradox is resolved in the following section which shows how education spending relative to GNP is lower for Latin America than for any other region. This suggests that the gap in education spending between Latin America and the world is a function of the low tax base in the region. In 1988 education expenditures ranged from 4.7% of public expenditures to 27%. Half of the countries in the world spent less than 14.5% of the public budget on education; on average they spent 14.8%. Table 6 shows that Latin America is at the high end of educati
