Abstract:

Since the late 90s, but especially between 2007 and 2012, the Government of Mexico City took equity and the increase insocial capital as the guiding principles of its actions and policies in all social life spheres, but especially in all matters concerning education.

In fact, most of the City’s educational programmes in that period tried to ensure that young people have the option to attend school and will not have to leave it due to the lack of financial means, thus increasing human and social capital in the city.

The purpose of this paper is threefold. Firstly, it attempts to show that equity in education is not just a matter of social rights (which in itself would be enough) but also a matter of general social welfare. This is done by presenting the results of a previous study undertaken by the paper´s author about the effects of education on income distribution and social polarization; this was carried out by analyzing the behaviour of wage income in Mexico. Secondly, the paper aims to show that the educational system in Mexico City has yet to reach the goal of EFA (Education for All), especially when it comes to upper-secondary and higher education. Thus any policy aimed to attain “Education for all” in these educational levels is relevant and necessary. Thirdly, the paper shows the results of the evaluations of the impacts of two of those programmes (the ´Talented Children´ program and the ´Va Seguro´ program) on relevant aspects of their beneficiaries´s behaviour which could enhance the City´s human and social capital.

Econometric analysis was used both in the case of the study of the effects of education on income distribution and social polarization in Mexico, and also in the case of the evaluations of the impacts of the two programmes on their beneficiaries´s behaviour. Such evaluations show that ´Va Seguro´ enhances human capital by preventing students to abandon school, and that ´Talented Children´enhances both human and social capital, by increasing the beneficiaries´s degrees of creativity (indicative of productivity of human capital) and associativeness (indicative of social capital).

Keywords:

Talented children, social capital, human capital, Mexico City.