Influence of Women Literacy and Female Unemployment over the Poverty Rates of Female-Headed Households in Costa Rica during the last decade

Content Summary 2 Background 3 Methods 6 Results 8 Conclusions 12 References 13

Summary
The objective of this study was to estimate the determinants of poverty rates in female-headed households, in Costa Rica during the last decade.

For the purpose of this study, the data were collected from the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses (INEC). A Multiple Linear Regression was carried out in order to study the relationship between women literacy and female unemployment (as independent variables, explanatory variables or predictors) and poverty rates in female-headed households (as a dependent variable, or as the variable that is being predicted).

The results indicated that when literacy increases 1%, poverty decreases 0.477%. On the other hand when unemployment increases 1%, poverty also increases 0.621%.

Background
Some international facts that motivated this study: * Millennium Development Goals established by the United Nations, where the third goal is to promote gender equality and empower women, and the forth target to eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education, preferably by 2005, and to all levels of education no later than 2015. * Study made by Riane Eisler, David Loye, and Kari Norgaard in 1995. They examined social statistical data from 89 nations and concluded that the status of women can be a better predictor of a nation’s general quality of life than GDP. In that year they published a book called Women, Men, and the Global Quality of Life just on time for the Beijing United Nations Women’s Conference. The book points the importance of economic indicators that take into account the social construction of gender roles and relations as a key variable in how a society develops and allocates its resources. * The Beijing Platform for Action (1995)