| Hello, *|NOME|* The IMDS has been drawing attention in its publications to the educational progress of children in relation to their parents. Based on data from the World Bank (which made an effort to produce indicators of comparable educational mobility between countries, see here), it is observed that the proportion of individuals born in the 40s with higher schooling than their parents was 54.1%. In the generation of the 80s, 84.2% of Brazilians had higher schooling than their parents. One of the highest rates of upward educational mobility in the world (Brazil is sixth in a list of more than 140 countries). This analysis, however, needs to be contextualized. One cannot compare generations whose parents have very different schooling. It is much easier to overcome the schooling of parents when they are not educated. While 25.3% of the parents of Taiwanese born in the 1980s had incomplete elementary or junior high school education or less, in Brazil this fraction was 70.6%. Thus, the Brazilian educational mobility of this generation needs to be compared with countries/generations with a similar number of years of schooling of the generation of parents – that is, that were in a similar phase of the cycle of expansion of schooling. The generation of 1980 resembles the Swedish generation of the 1940s, the South Korean generation of the 1950s, the Malay generation of the 1960s or that of the Central African Republic of the 1980s. The good news is that the upward mobility of the 1980s generation is as high as that of the Swedish generation of the 1940s. The bad news is that we have only reached the speed of the Swedes 40 years later. To properly talk about social mobility, it is not enough to show that a high fraction of children has higher schooling than their parents. It is necessary to verify if the educational gap between young adults (who completed their schooling) whose parents have high and low educational attainment decreases. To do so, we need to resort to the supplements of the National Household Sample Survey of 1996 and 2014, whose questionnaire allows this intergenerational analysis. The proportion of people with high school education has increased, on average, 9.3 pp every decade of birth. While among those born in the 20s only 8.5% had high school education or more, 64.5% of those born in the 80s had completed high school or more (see here). In addition, the so-called medium-distance educational mobility has risen. Among children born in the 1920s whose parents had at most incomplete elementary or junior high school education, only 5% completed at least high school. For children born in the 1950s, this percentage rose to 22% and among those born in the 80s, it reached 53%. Nevertheless, the gap in the high school graduation rate between children of parents with incomplete high school or college education and children of uneducated parents has been falling at a slow pace. This difference was 66.8 percentage points for those born in 1920 and 56 pp for the generation born in 1980. In summary, this difference falls by only 1.8 pp every decade of birth. One of the main reasons for this disturbing result is the high dropout rate of children who live in poor homes and whose parents have low schooling. The main driver of the differences in educational attainment is not in skin color/race: for the generation born in 1980, the difference between the fraction of whites and non-whites with a high school education or more is 19.5 percentage points, in favor of whites. Nor is it in sex: between women and men, the difference is 8.4 pp in favor of the former. The disparity is mainly associated with parental schooling: while 98% of children of parents with higher education reach at least high school, only 35% of children of uneducated parents do. The IMDS has led efforts to support state and local governments in the development of plans and the operationalization of programs focused on combating dropout. The main reason why the institute decided to delve into the topic of school dropout is that this phenomenon has its highest incidence among the poorest. This and other results on the recent behavior of the dropout rate in the country can be seen here and here. The consequence of this higher dropout rate among the poorest can be seen by comparing high school graduation rates for adults whose parents have different levels of education and income. According to the latest available data, from 2021, among young people aged 18 to 19 who come from the 40% lowest per capita income households and whose guardian had incomplete high school education or less, 20.6% did not attend school and had not completed high school. In the same age group, only 6.2% of young people with guardians with high school education or more and among the 40% higher per capita household incomes were in the same situation. For the age group of 20 to 21 years, the percentages are respectively 32.3% and 7.3% (access here).
We have recently started a line of research to answer the following question: are the expenses with quality schooling in Brazil focused on families with less educated parents? We will soon be bringing results. See you in the next “ Letter from IMDS”! Paulo Tafner CEO | 
