Person:
Saavedra-Chanduvi, Jaime

Education Global Practice
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Education, Poverty and inequality, Labor markets, Economics of education
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Education Global Practice
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Last updated January 31, 2023
Biography
Jaime Saavedra leads the Education Global Practice at the World Bank Group. He rejoined the World Bank Group from the Government of Peru, where he served as Minister of Education from 2013 through 2016. During his tenure, the performance of Peru’s education system improved substantially as measured by international learning assessments. Throughout his career, Mr. Saavedra, a Peruvian national, has led groundbreaking work in the areas of poverty and inequality, employment and labor markets, the economics of education, and monitoring and evaluation systems. He has held positions at a number of international organizations and think-tanks, among them the Inter-American Development Bank, Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, International Labour Organization, Grupo de Análisis para el Desarollo and the National Council of Labor in Peru. He has also held teaching and research positions in academia and has published extensively. Prior to assuming his role as Minister for Education of Peru, he had a ten year career at the World Bank where, most recently, he served as Director for Poverty Reduction and Equity as well as Acting Vice President, Poverty Reduction & Economic Management Network. Mr. Saavedra holds a Ph.D in economics from Columbia University and a Bachelor's degree in economics from the Catholic University of Peru.  

Publication Search Results

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    Latin America and the Social Contract : Patterns of Social Spending and Taxation
    ( 2009) Breceda, Karla ; Rigolini, Jamele ; Saavedra, Jaime
    This article analyzes the incidence of social spending and taxation by income quintile for seven Latin American countries, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Absolute levels of social spending in Latin America are fairly flat across income quintiles, a pattern similar to that in the United States and differing from the more progressive pattern of spending in the United Kingdom. The structure of taxation in Latin America is also similar to that of the United States. Because of high income inequality in Latin America and the US, the rich bear of most the burden, whereas the United Kingdom taxes the middle class to a greater extent. The analysis suggests that many Latin American countries are trapped in a vicious cycle in which the rich resist the expansion of the welfare state (because they bear most of its tax burden without receiving commensurate benefits), and their opposition to its expansion in turn maintains long-term inequalities.
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    Informality and Productivity in the Labor Market in Peru
    ( 2008) Chong, Alberto ; Galdo, Jose ; Saavedra, Jaime
    This article analyzes the evolution of informal employment in Peru from 1986 to 2001. Contrary to what one would expect, the informality rates increased steadily during the 1990s despite the introduction of flexible contracting mechanisms, a healthy macroeconomic recovery, and tighter tax codes and regulation. We explore different factors that may explain this upward trend including the role of labor legislation and labor allocation between/within sectors of economic activity. Finally, we illustrate the negative correlation between productivity and informality by evaluating the impacts of the Youth Training PROJOVEN Program that offers vocational training to disadvantaged young individuals. We find significant training impacts on the probability of formal employment for both males and females.
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    Occupational Training to Reduce Gender Segregation: The Impacts of ProJoven
    ( 2008) Nopo, Hugo ; Robles, Miguel ; Saavedra, Jaime
    This paper illustrates the process of program evaluation for ProJoven, the Peruvian youth labor training program. The program provides beneficiaries with basic three-month training in low-skill occupations and with internship opportunities. ProJoven's design promotes gender equality by encouraging female participation in training for traditionally male-dominated occupations and by providing subsidies so mothers with children can participate. Complementing detailed fieldwork in search of the appropriate control group, the econometric work implements a two-stage matching procedure that includes propensity scores (on the first stage), and gender and labor income (on the second one). The matching on gender allows identification of differentiated program impacts on men and women. The matching on income attacks the problem of Ashenfelter's Dips. The evaluation shows substantial differences in ProJoven's impact for men and women. Eighteen months after participation in the program, employment rates for women improved by about 15% (while employment for men reduced by 11%), gender occupational segregation reduced by 30% and women's labor income improved by 93% (while men's earnings increased by 11%). On the other hand, the cost of the promotion of gender equality represented only 1.5% of ProJoven's total budget. These results suggest that labor training programs that promote equal gender participation have disproportionately positive effects on outcomes for women trainees in a labor market with substantial gender differences.