| Hello, *|NOME|* Inequality in access to education is a significant obstacle to Brazil's social and economic progress, affecting both present and future generations, as well as evidently negatively affecting children and young people with less access. This inequality compromises the ability to move up the social ladder and, consequently, social mobility. To assess this issue, IMDS calculated the Educational Opportunities Index (EOI), a tool that allows a detailed analysis of existing disparities and offers valuable insights for the creation of more effective and inclusive public policies. The study can be seen in the presentation “Educational Opportunities and Social Mobility in Brazil” and in the news article “Pandemic reduced educational opportunities for children and widened the inequality gap, says study”. The EOI is derived from the Human Opportunity Index (HOI) methodology, an indicator developed by the World Bank and used to measure inequality of opportunity in several countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. IMDS adapted this methodology to the Brazilian context, taking into account the individual circumstances that may influence each person's educational trajectory, such as sex, skin color, family income, geographic location, among others. IMDS also selected opportunity variables that reflect the main milestones of the educational trajectory. The EOI calculation is based on the difference between the overall coverage of a given opportunity (M) and a penalty that reflects the differences in coverage between groups (P). If the overall coverage rate was the same for all groups (EOI = M), the penalty (P) would be zero. As the differences in coverage between groups increase, the penalty grows, reflecting greater inequality of opportunity. The EOI for indicators of access to school, such as enrollment in preschool, primary and secondary education, is higher than 90%, with a penalty of less than 2%, indicating that coverage is in the process of being universalized. This suggests that most children and young people have access to school, regardless of their circumstances. Therefore, one of the main conclusions of the EOI is that the problem of inequality of educational opportunities in Brazil lies in the indicators of educational progress, that is, in the ability to advance in education levels. The EOI for the indicator of completion of high school at the correct age (18 and 19 years) is 54%, with an inequality penalty of 7.5%. The situation becomes even more worrisome when the Educational Opportunity Index (EOI) addresses the inequality of educational opportunities with regard to achieving the appropriate level of learning. For example, students in the 5th grade of Elementary School have a rate of 53% of adequate learning in Portuguese and 39% in Mathematics. However, these rates are penalized by 8% – in both cases due to inequality. This means that not only is coverage low, but it is even more affected by the adverse circumstances faced by these students. The relationship between the opportunity index and social mobility can be understood in the following way: a high index of inequality of opportunity implies that people have different chances of access to quality education, depending on the circumstances of their birth. Hence people will also have different chances of moving up the social ladder, as education is a determining factor for income and well-being. Accordingly, inequality of opportunity tends to perpetuate itself from generation to generation, resulting in low intergenerational mobility. We invite you to access “Educational Opportunities and Social Mobility in Brazil” where it is possible to observe the behavior of all the indicators studied, as well as their respective divisions by region and states. In addition, it is possible to follow the evolution of these indices longitudinally since 2012. The presentation also allows us to visualize the main contributions of the characteristics defined as circumstances to the inequality observed in the Educational Opportunities Index in each of the indicators analyzed. As can be seen, family income, parents' schooling, and the number of children in the household are the main discriminating factors of the inequality of educational opportunities, leaving cleavages such as sex or skin color/race, among others, with a very small role in explaining the inequality.
See you in the next “Letter from IMDS”! Paulo Tafner CEO |
