Isabela Munevar Escalante, researcher at the Human Development Lab at Universidad de los Andes, has been awarded the FAI Puente Iniciación 2025 grant, a competitive funding initiative that supports early-stage research projects and strengthens scholars’ prospects for external funding.
Her project, “Safe Paths to School: Evidence from Bogotá’s Walking to School Caravans,” examines how daily school commutes affect educational outcomes in urban contexts.
In many low- and middle-income countries, children walk to school through dense and often unsafe neighborhoods. These commutes generate coordination costs and safety concerns for families, which can undermine school attendance and continuity. Despite its relevance, this dimension has received limited attention in education policy.
The study evaluates the Ciempiés program in Bogotá, which organizes groups of students walking to school along designated safe routes, accompanied by trained monitors. Using administrative data from 2016 to 2024 and a differences-in-differences approach, the research estimates the program’s causal effects on educational outcomes.
The findings show a 6.8 percentage point reduction in school switching and a 10.9 percentage point reduction in branch switching—both representing declines of over 40% relative to pre-treatment levels. The study also finds suggestive evidence of reductions in grade repetition and dropout.
In cost terms, the program amounts to approximately USD 285 per child per year, making it between 24% and 51% less expensive than school bussing alternatives.
These results highlight the role of out-of-school factors in shaping student trajectories and contribute to ongoing discussions on cost-effective, scalable interventions to improve school retention in urban settings.
