Gender, Regional Socioeconomic Development, and the School to Work Transition of Young Brazilians

• In Event: 435 - Section on Sociology of Education Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 23. Special Topics in Education: International Studies

Abstract

Brazil is known for its high levels of gender, regional, and socioeconomic inequality, but more recently for the rapid expansion and differentiation of its educational system. As Brazil moves toward a more economically powerful regional and even global position, its ability to prepare a well-educated and highly skilled population of secondary and post-secondary graduates that can successfully transition into a rapidly changing labor force has become crucial. We use a new and specially constructed data set on school to work set provided by the International Labour Office to assess how young Brazilians are negotiating this transition. We focus on variations by sex, by Brazil’s vast regional levels of economic development, race, social class, placement in the formal sector, and educational preparation. We pay particular attention to the large number of young people in the NEET category, those in neither educational nor employment statuses. We estimate models to predict both employment and several indicators of job quality. Using primarily multinomial logit models, we find enduring but diminished levels of unequal access to successful school to work transitions in Brazil. Young Brazilians continue to be stratified along several crucial dimensions, even as the general level of access to further schooling has expanded.

Authors

• David B. Bills, University of Iowa

• Leticia Marteleto, University of Texas-Austin

• Felix Weiss, Leibniz-Institute for the Social Sciences

• Susanne Schührer, European University Institute