# **2. Data**

## **_Colombia: Institutional setting_**

Colombia is a developing economy with a per capita Gross National Income of us $ 6,180. In terms of per capita gdp, Colombia is below the Latin America and the Caribbean average. As with most developing countries in the midst of a demographic transition, Colombia is highly urbanized with 71.3% of its population living in urban areas (Ferreyra and Roberts, 2018).

Students in Colombia in their final year of high school are mandated to take the Saber 11, a standardized test covering multiple academic fields similar to high school exit exams in the us. Qualified high school graduates may then enroll into either of two program types offered in Colombia’s higher education system: four- and five-year programs similar to us bachelor’s programs or shorter two- or three-year programs. Higher education institutions (hei) that offer bachelor’s programs include universities (henceforth, "colleges"), technological schools and technical and technological (hereafter, t&t) institutes. In what follows, ‘moving for college’ means, in general, moving to pursue higher education, regardless of the hei type attended.

Most departments in Colombia have a large public university, with the largest public universities usually being the most selective.<sup>4</sup> Average tuition at public colleges is significantly lower than in private colleges; calculations by (Carranza and Ferreyra, 2019) show that for an individual with annual family income equal to 12 monthly minimum wages, annual tuition for a bachelor’s program is 19% versus 100% of income at a public versus private college, respectively. In addition to costs, average student ability by college varies substantially within and across the public and private sectors (Carranza and Ferreyra, 2019).

## **_Data sources and sample_**

Our sample draws from two datasets. The first one is the universe of high school students who took Saber 11 between 2000 and 2009. For these students, we observe test scores (which we normalize by semester) as well as a rich set of characteristics such as gender, ethnic origin, and parental income. Importantly, this data set records the location of the high school attended by the student. The second data set is administrative data from the Labor Observatory of Education on college graduates. For these individuals we observe hei, degree, and major. For those who work as employees in the formal sector between 2007 and 2013, we also observe wages and work location.

The combination of these two datasets yields a dataset of young college graduates ( _n_ = 729,726) for whom we observe hei, degree, major, Saber 11 standardized score, background characteristics, and importantly, location when finishing high school, attending college, and beginning to work. We first restrict the data to those who obtained a bachelor’s degree ( _n_ = 473,775). We further limit the sample to individuals who had graduated from college by 2012 (since the last year we observe a wage is 2013), were aged between 20 and 30 at college graduation, took the Saber 11 test between the ages of 14 and 24, had at least 4 years between taking Saber 11 and completing 4A department is similar to a us state and is a relatively autonomous country subdivision governed by a Governor. Bogota is the Capital District and not one of the 32 departments.

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