This paper uses data from the 2012 Bolivia National Census of Population and Housing, which was collected in 2012 by the national statistical agency of Bolivia, _Instituto Nacional de Estadística_ (INE). As a census, it covers over 10 million individuals in 2.8 million households throughout the country. It is a useful resource for identifying patterns of educational disadvantage faced by different groups, as it enumerates the entire population and reflects actual outcome disparities across Bolivia’s population, as opposed to relying on assumptions for a sample drawn from it.<sup>9</sup> The simplicity of the variables in the census also means that concerns regarding measurement error are not as relevant as they would be in a survey. However, the scope of the analysis is limited by the fact that the census includes only a few socioeconomic variables that can be analyzed as outcome indicators or included as control variables in regression analysis.

For the purposes of this paper, indigenous status is determined by individuals’ self-identification of ethnicity in the 2012 census. A common alternative in the literature is to rely on other identity markers, such as language, religion, place of birth or phenotypic characteristics, even in contexts where ethnic self-identification variables are available, as the former are believed to be less malleable than the latter. Among these, language is the most widely used. In the context of Bolivia, the decision to use self-identification over language is motivated by the fact that, from the late 1950s to at least the 1980s, education of indigenous people was not only conducted exclusively in Spanish, but also aimed to spread its use. This might imply that some groups may have adopted Spanish as their primary language (this might especially be the case for Aymaras, for whom Spanish became an important tool for asserting their legal rights). In addition, massive urban migration, a dominant trend in Bolivia since the 1950s, makes it hard to identify groups on the basis of location in a precise way, while previous stigma associated with being indigenous may have led some indigenous groups to adopt Spanish as their primary language (Myers 1973). The recent rise of indigenous people in politics, including the election of an Aymara president in 2005, has arguably decreased the stigma of indigenous self-identification, and an element of efforts to empower indigenous groups has been to recognize their self-identification as members of such groups.<sup>10</sup> This, however, does not mean that the decision to rely on self-reported ethnicity comes without drawbacks. For example, the share of self-reported indigenous people in the Bolivian population has decreased markedly between the last two censuses (2001-2012), consistent with the literature that shows that race, color and other self-identification indicators tend to vary across time, place, economic status, political discourses, among other factors (Telles and Paschel 2012). By using

> 9 Carr (2013) argues that household surveys are more prone to underrepresenting traditionally excluded populations (e.g. people who live in fragile or disjointed households, slum populations, those who live in areas posing security risks, among others) compared to censuses. Surveys can also be more prone to issues of measurement error and sampling bias. However, as noted by Buettner and Garland (2008, cited in Carr 2013), it is also possible for censuses to exclude minorities, marginalized groups, non-citizens and specific categories of prisoners or rebels because of political reasons.

10 As the Bolivian identity as a multi-cultural and pluri-national country has gained favor, individuals who are otherwise not tied to indigenous groups in terms of culture or ethnicity (though they may have some indigenous ancestry, as is the case of most Bolivians), may declare themselves as “indigenous” as a political statement of alignment with Bolivian ideals. This may be a particular trend for leftist urban intellectuals (Canessa 2007). If this is the case, however, our results underestimate the extent of indigenous disadvantage. It is also not clear if these people would declare themselves as “other indigneous” or choose Aymara or Quechua. Further, our analysis controls for place of birth, which may address some of the bias introduced by this largely urban phenomenon.

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