The estimated cohort effects, which are particularly revealing for our analysis, are plotted in Figure 9.<sup>20</sup> These effects are not readily apparent from Figure 7 since they are confounded by age and time effects and differences across counties. As can be seen in Panel A, there is a clear positive cohort effect for school attendance showing continuous progress in the expansion of education access in the region across generations. Interestingly, however, this is not the case for the employment trends in Panel B. According to our estimates, there is a slight inverted “u” shape pattern with a mildly increasing positive trend in access to the labor market for cohorts born between 1965 and 1980 -which entered working age between 1983 and 1998- and a slightly declining trend for cohorts born later and entering the labor market during the end of the 1990s and the early 2000s.

The combination of growing school attendance with (slight) increases in labor market insertion for cohorts born before 1980, reinforced each other and lead to a decline in the proportion of Osow youth across cohorts up to that point (Panel C). However, after the turning point in employment levels for cohorts born after 1980, the expansion in the share of individuals allocating time to education was counterbalanced to some extent by the lower rates of labor market insertion, resulting in a practically flat (with a slight negative slope) trend in the share of Osow youth. This lead to the persistent levels identified in Cárdenas et.al. (2011) and de Hoyos et.al. (2013).

# _Differences across Latin America_

So far we have used the results from country level data to illustrate regional patterns across Latin America, from which some stylized facts have been derived. However, as shown in Bentaouet and Székely (2014) there are important differences in school enrollment patterns across the region. In particular, these authors classify countries in three groups, which are relevant for our analysis. The first group including Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador and the Dominican Republic is labelled of “ _early dropout_ ”, since they are characterized by high dropout rates from the schooling system between ages 12 and 15, when the average LA youth is transiting through Lower Secondary. The second group is labelled of drop out “ _in transition_ ” to Upper Secondary (US), and is characterized by a large reduction in enrollment in the transit between Lower and Upper Secondary. Costa Rica, Ecuador, Paraguay, Mexico, Colombia, Peru and Bolivia are included in this group. Finally Panama, Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Venezuela, and Chile are classified as of “ _late dropout_ ” because reductions in enrollment occur more frequently during the course of Upper Secondary education.

These differences are relevant for the study of the Osow youth phenomenon, since they imply that the origins of this problem could vary across countries. For instance, in the first group of early dropout the Osow condition observed later along the life cycle will likely be associated with events

> 20Time effects are not presented graphically since they are estimated to be close to zero for all three time uses.

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