Demographic dynamics and educational inequality in Mexico

Silvia Giorguli-Saucedo, El Colegio de México
Eunice D. Vargas Valle, University of Texas at Austin
Viviana Salinas, University of Texas at Austin
Celia Hubert, Secretaría de Educación Pública en México

The goal of this study is to analyze the relationship between education and population dynamics in Mexico. According to the theoretical tradition on population and development, the pace of population growth, family size, and migration affect human capital accumulation among the school-age population. Within the context of fast demographic change and persistent regional inequality, this study explores how three demographic dimensions affect educational outcomes at municipal level: youth dependency, teenage fertility and international and internal migration. We use data from the 10% sample of the Mexican Census 2000 and administrative records from the Ministry of Education. Different from prior research on the demography of education, this study includes three educational outcomes: enrollment, educational gaps and attainment. It also includes indicators of schooling supply and quality. The preliminary analysis shows the importance of demographic variables, their spatial dimension and the interaction with the degree of urbanization at the municipal level.