Among Whites, the chance of finishing a course is 6.2% (by Agência Estado)

The daughter of a father and mother with incomplete Elementary and Junior High School education, advertising student Sabrina Mayara Soares de Alencar, 23, is betting on completing college to get a better income in the future. She knows, however, that her trajectory is not the norm, but an exception. Among her acquaintances, she is one of the few to be able to climb the “step” to higher education. “It is very difficult, especially for those who live in my city; the income is very low”, says the student, who lives in Itapoã, one of the regions with the lowest per capita income in the Federal District. The data show that the situation worsens when considering the Black population. Among children of uneducated parents, the chances of finishing higher education are 6.2% for Whites and 3.7% for Blacks. Even among children of parents with complete higher education, the proportion of those who repeat the feat is 71.7% for Whites and 58.8% for Blacks.

For economist Paulo Tafner, IMDS’s CEO, responsible for the data survey, the problem of social mobility is not restricted to the racial issue, since it also affects poor Whites. “But obviously, in the case of Blacks it is a little more serious,” he says. The increase in this group’s social mobility depends, according to Tafner, on the formulation of policies that improve the effectiveness of spending on education, health, and social assistance. He cites the experience of Ceará as a positive example: the State started to have greater supervision of the students’ learning and to reward good performances. The problem is that this is not the rule of thumb in the rest of Brazilian schools.