# **1 Introduction**

The low price of oil along with onerous government spending and excessive international debt have pushed the Republica Bolivariana de Venezuela, once one of the richest countries in Latin America, in to one of the worst economic and social crises of modern day. Economic activity has been contracting with GDP (PPP) shrinking at a rate of 35% in 2019 according to United Nations data. The inflation rate hit 929,797% in 2019 (IMF, 2019), while 89% of the population has been estimated to be living in poverty (ENCOVI, 2018). Health conditions have worsened with an average Venezuelan losing 10 kilos of body weight in 2017 and infant mortality rising to 26 per 1000 live births in 2016 from 14.6 per 1,000 live births in 2010. An average of 89 homicides were reported per 100,000 inhabitants in 2019, which is almost three times the rate of countries that are at war (World Bank, 2019a). These worsening economic and social conditions generated an unprecedented exodus of Venezuelans in search of a better future and ability to avail basic human rights. The Venezuelan refugees and migrants living abroad increased by about six times between 2015 and 2019 as Table 1 suggests. The net migration rate in the Republica Bolivariana de Venezuela, was about –15.69 per 1000 population in 2019, suggesting more than 7% of the population of the Republica Bolivariana de Venezuela, has fled the country since 2014. Although the United States and Spain were the most significant hosts of Venezuelans<sup>1</sup> traditionally, 80% of the Venezuelans who were displaced after 2014 were hosted by Latin American countries. Colombia and Peru have been the most significant hosts followed by Chile, Ecuador, the United States and Brazil. As of October 2020, Colombia has about 1.7 million of the Venezuelan refugees and migrants, which is after about 60,000 to 100,000 Venezuelans returned back to reunite with their families during the COVID-19 pandemic (Mazza, 2020). Peru stands second with about 1 million refugees and migrants, while Chile and Ecuador are the third and fourth significant hosts with about 0.47 million and 0.41 million Venezuelan refugees and migrants respectively. Brazil is hosting about 0.26 million Venezuelans (18% of all its total migrant and refugee population) as of the second quarter of 2020, 76 times the number of Venezuelan refugees and migrants in 2015 (Table 1), resulting in a federal decree number 9.285 of February 2018, recognizing it as a humanitarian crisis.<sup>2</sup> Most Latin American countries have showed openness in welcoming and granting legal status to Venezuelan refugees and migrants (Selee and Bolter, 2020). However, the sheer size of the Venezuelan refugees and migrants means that addressing their urgent humanitarian needs and providing for their protracted stay may strain the public resources of the Latin American countries, unless they can harness the potentials of the Venezuelans to drive economic growth, which is a development challenge. This will only be possible through economic and social integration of Venezuelans. Greater economic and social inclusion will allow Venezuelans to work in productive jobs, create new job opportunities as business owners, pay taxes and contribute to the social security system, that will pave the path for economic development (UNHCR, 2018). However, our knowledge of living conditions of the Venezuelans in Latin American countries is scant. There are few studies (Olivieri et al. (2020), Graham et al. (2020), Uscategui and Andrea (2019)) that look into the labor market conditions of the Venezuelan refugees and migrants but to the best of our knowledge, there has not been any study that looks into their access to schooling<sup>3</sup> and social protection programs.

> 1This paper uses Venezuelans and Venezuelans migrants, asylum seekers and refugees interchangeably.

> 2http://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil03 _/ato_ 2015 _−_ 2018 _/_ 2018 _/decreto/D_ 9285 _.htm_

> 3This paper concentrates on grades up to high school as data on university is not available. However, the paper finds that inclusion of Venezuelans decreases with level of education, suggesting that integration will be even lower in

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