Low parental education reinforces child poverty

This is the second article in a series of three, dedicated to studies on children and adolescents in Brazil. The parents and guardians of the current poor children and youth in Brazil still have a limited level of education, which compromises the future of this generation and increases the risks of perpetuating poverty. More than half (56%) of poor children and young people lived in 2019 with guardians without complete primary education. The numbers are from an exclusive study done by the Mobility and Social Development Institute (IMDS), which shows that, despite an improvement in recent years, the share of poor children and young people in households with low-educated caregivers is still high. The data on these poor children and young people are even more expressive when compared to children from families in the top 20% of income in the country. In this more financially privileged group, only 9% lived, in 2019, with guardians without secondary education, 4.6% without primary education, 0.5% with less than four years of schooling and 0.1% with illiterate people.“ To look at education is to anticipate the individual’s income history. If a person accumulates little human capital, the tendency is for lower productivity, which increases the chance of having a lower income,” says Paulo Tafner, director of the institute and responsible for the study.