Inequality of educational outcomes amidst the expansion of the education system: a study considering the positional character of schooling

Abstract:

The paper deals with the relationship between social origin and educational outcomes. The objective is to verify if the increasing schooling of the Brazilian population was able to weaken the relationship between class of origin and achieved education. We use relative measures of schooling, which reflect the distribution of education among the population and/or its value in the labor market. The empirical analysis is guided by the comparison of the results of statistical models that use absolute and relative measures of schooling. Such models are applied to data collected in 1982, 1996 and 2014, for individuals aged between 28 and 41 years, thus forming three distinct cohorts. The data come from the Pnads – IBGE, and are analyzed using linear (OLS) and non-linear (logit-ordinal) models. The results support the hypothesis that, by adopting relative measures of education, we arrive at less optimistic estimates about the capacity of educational expansion to reduce the effect of class origin on the level of schooling achieved.

Keywords:
Inequalities; Educational Outcomes; Positional education; Classes; Social stratification