“Education is the key ingredient to reduce Brazilian inequality”

Check out the interview with Vitor Pereira, doctor in economics with extensive experience in conducting impact assessments in the field of educational economics.

Vitor Pereira, PhD, master and bachelor's degree in Economics from PUC-Rio (2016), with a sandwich doctorate at Stanford University (2015), is professor of the Professional Master's Degree in Evaluation and Monitoring of Public Policies at the National School of Public Administration (Enap) and was one of our interviewees in the latest issue of Revista Algomais, about the future of education. He was also director of the Evaluation Department at SAGI, in the former Ministry of Social Development and has experience in conducting various impact assessments, especially in the field of educational economics. Today we publish the interview in its entirety in which he talks about the relationship between the quality of education and the country's competitiveness, in addition to pointing out reference cases of countries that managed to win the economic development game by starting with a robust and assertive investment in their educational systems.

How do the difficulties of our educational system contribute to the country's social inequality? How is it possible to reverse this scenario?

Education is by far the main determinant of people's productivity and wages. The more years of study, the greater the person's income. But unfortunately, Brazil is still a country with little educational mobility, although the picture has improved recently. A recent study by the Institute for Mobility and Social Development (IMDS) showed that only 1 in every 4 children of uneducated parents reach the High School level. Of every 6 in 10 Brazilians whose parents do not have a High School education, the children also stopped studying before finishing this stage. Without giving these younger generations an educational opportunity, we are reproducing the inequality of past generations.
 

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