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September 2006, Vol. 12, No. 3Poverty, Gender, and
Youth Guatemala’s population is among the poorest, least educated, youngest, and fastest growing in Latin America. Indigenous (Mayan) girls are among the most disadvantaged, vulnerable members of the population. The Population Council has conducted research to better understand the status of Mayan girls. The results of these studies have been used to design programs to improve Mayan girls’ lives and health and to address the educational inequities they face. Education They found that at each year of age, Mayan girls are less likely than other children to be enrolled in school. At age seven, only 54 percent of Mayan girls are in school, compared with 71 percent of Mayan boys and around three-quarters of Ladino boys and girls. At age 16, only 25 percent of Mayan girls are enrolled, versus around half of Mayan boys and Ladino girls and boys. The one-quarter of Mayan girls who are classified as extremely poor have the worst educational outcomes: only half of such girls between 7 and 12 years old have entered school, fewer than 10 percent of girls 13–24 years of age who entered primary school have completed that level, and just 14 percent of these primary school graduates have ever enrolled in secondary school. Mayan girls from extremely poor households who ever enrolled in school did so much later than other children: 0.73 years later than Mayan girls in medium poor households and 1.2 years later than Mayan girls in nonpoor households. For primary-age children (7–12 years) in every gender–ethnicity status who were not enrolled at the time of the survey, lack of money was the largest single factor identified for nonenrollment. Lack of interest in school was the second most frequently cited reason, followed by “age”—presumably being overage for grade. Among 13–24-year-olds, the most frequently cited reasons for not being enrolled in school were household chores (for females) and work (for males). Among both sexes, lack of money was the second most common reason, with few differences by ethnicity. “Mayan girls have by far the lowest primary school completion rates, due in large part to poverty-driven domestic labor burdens that begin to impinge upon them at puberty,” says Hallman. Early marriage and
childbearing? “Our analysis shows that enrollment rates of all young people drop drastically at age 12 years, but the effect is the most pronounced for Mayan girls. Among nonenrolled Mayan girls age 12–18, only about 10 percent have completed primary school, indicating that obstacles in progressing from primary to secondary school are not the main reason for Mayan adolescent girls’ nonenrollment. Our research reveals that poverty and pressure to undertake unpaid household chores are the main reasons,” says Hallman. These findings point to the need to better target scholarships and other educational incentive programs, in addition to continuing to extend the reach of poverty-reduction programs. A program to help Source Outside funding See Also
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