This paper aims to reconcile the role ascribed to education as a major cause of the recent reduction in inequality in Brazil with a class analysis framework. A series of univariate and multivariate inequality decompositions were carried out, including the between-group/within-group decomposition of the GE(0) index and the regression-based decomposition suggested by Fields (2003). Our results show that a) whereas the class structure composition was relatively stable between 2002 and 2011, the educational composition changed dramatically; b) inequality between classes accounts for a larger fraction of total inequality than inequality between educational groups; and c) when class and education are analyzed simultaneously, the fraction of total inequality explained by education falls abruptly, while the relative share of class inequality remains constant. Thus, educational improvement was apparently much more important for the reduction in inequality than changes in the other dimensions captured by class structure.
class structure; income inequality; educational inequality
