Cost-effectiveness evaluation of social spending on education and health in Bolivia

Abstract

One of the biggest concerns of development policy is to improve the quality of human resources to achieve higher levels of productivity. Quality at work can be achieved through education and the improvement of health and nutrition levels of the population. This paper appeals to the Cost-effectiveness Analysis as a way to evaluate the impact of social spending in Bolivia over a decade, which, regardless of the various changes in government administration that occurred, remained consistent, and, what more importantly, it showed effective results in the student population and in the health of the population. The recurrent limitation lies in the availability of disaggregated statistical information at the municipal level to assess the effectiveness of social spending at that level. This decisively restricts the monitoring and evaluation of public education and health policies, both nationally and at the local and regional levels by the corresponding state entities.