Educación, desigualdad y territorio en ecuador

Abstract

Since 1990, the year in which the first Human Development Report is published, it is recognized thatdevelopment will only be possible when countries are able to strengthen their human capital as a wayto eradicate poverty. Since then, worldwide progress has not been homogenous either betweencountries or territories within the same country. In this regard, education policies and conditional cashtransfer programmes have played an important role in public action to reduce situations of vulnerabilityand improve the lives of the poor people.In Ecuador, the values of the Human Development Index (HDI) and, in particular, the index of theeducation dimension, have registered a notable improvement in recent years. However, when it isdisaggregated at territorial level (by regions, provinces and cantons), great differences are revealed.The difficulties of access to educational services and the quality of the offer (about 40% of the sixthgrade schools of General Basic Education in Ecuador lack drinking water or does not have sewerage,compared to 20% and 34%, respectively, on average in the region) explain, in part, these differencesbetween urban, rural and indigenous areas, which amplifies the risk of poverty and social exclusion in certain zones of the country. The objective of this poster is to illustrate these inequalities and their evolution in the 221 cantons of Ecuador from the microdata of the last two rounds of the Living Conditions Survey (2005-2006 and 2013-2014), which have allowed us to obtain the Education Indices, following the methodology of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), based on the definitions of the education indicators of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), with some adaptations to the educational reality of Ecuador.