changing structure of school to work transition in Brazil

Abstract

This paper provides an in-depth analysis of the changing structure and consequences of the links between the educational system and labor markets in Brazil in the past 30 years. Using the linkages methodology proposed by DiPrete et al. (2017) and Elbers (2021), we identify changes in education-occupation linkage that were offset by Brazil’s rapid educational expansion, distinguishing between changes in rates and changes in the structure of school-to-work linkages. We find that the overall compositional shift towards higher educational levels did not have substantial effects on occupational allocation, yet the trends for younger and older workers, as well as for workers with different fields of study in the tertiary system, were fundamentally different. Our findings suggest that the features of educational expansion in Brazil – i.e., privatization, field of study concentration, and quality discrepancies – contributed to a weakening of the links between education and occupational systems.

Similar gaps, different paths? Comparing racial inequalities among BA holders in Brazil and the United States

“…The extent to which field of study affects either average earnings or racial inequality in earnings also may depend on the structural relationship between particular fields and the labor market. As Monaghan and Jang (2017: 2) describe, “[M]ajors vary in the degree to which they offer a well-established path to a set of occupations, and in the remuneration of occupations to which they render access.” Although, in comparison with most European countries, American and Brazilian educational institutions are weakly linked to the labor market (De Souza Leão et al, 2021), there is still substantial variation in how fields of study channel graduates into occupations in both countries. For example, medicine funnels graduates into a small set of occupations, while business funnels graduates into a much larger set.…”