Persistent Educational and Socio-demographic Inequalities and its Effects on Labor Market Participation: Evidence from Brazil

Education attainment is an important factor in considering the individual’s probabilities of being successful throughout the life cycle. It is associated with better work conditions, better health outcomes, and higher social status (Berkman and Truesdale, 2023). Low- and middle-income countries are characterized by significant levels of social inequalities. In such contexts, just a small number of individuals reach post-secondary levels of education, while many less educated people face significant difficulties in terms of labor market participation (low-paid jobs, less cognitive and more demanding physical effort activities, informality, lack of social security rights etc.) (Fernandes and Queiroz, 2024). Although its importance, education is not the only element that deserves attention. Historically, racial and gender inequalities, explain negative differences in the outcomes of women and ethnically disadvantage individuals. In Brazil, there are significant wage and opportunity gaps that specifically harm black women compared to white men in the labor market. Inequalities hinder an efficient constitution of the demographic dividends, resulting in higher levels of dependency (Fernandes and Queiroz, 2024). This paper aims to investigate how racial and gender inequalities in education persist over time in low- and middle-income countries using data from Brazil. It also attempts to understand how educational inequalities explain differences in labor market participation. Ordered logistic regressions were estimated to calculate probabilities of acquiring higher levels of education using census data from 1980 to 2010 collected from IPUMS-International. Results show that inequalities are persistent, hindering welfare of historical disadvantaged groups (women and black and indigenous) and harm the possibilities of sustained economic development, which is of more concern in societies that experience rapid processes of aging.