This paper explores the variation in intergenerational educational mobility across the Brazilian states based on univariate econometric techniques. The analysis of the national household survey (PNAD‐2014) confirms a strong variation in mobility among the 27 federative units in Brazil and demonstrates a significant correlation between mobility and income inequality. In this sense, this work presents empirical evidence for the existence of the “Great Gatsby curve” within a single country: states with greater income disparities present higher levels of persistence in educational levels across generations. Finally, the paper investigates one specific mechanism behind this correlation: whether higher income inequality might lead to lower investment in human capital among children from socially vulnerable households. The paper delivers robust and compelling results showing that children born into families where the parents have not completed primary education have a statistically significant reduction in their chance of completing the educational system if they live in states with a higher level of income inequality.

This work uses anonymized geolocation data from 60 million mobile phone users in Brazil to quantify the impact of coronavirus lockdown measures on social distancing. The results confirm that the current share of the population staying home is lower than the target set by the public authorities to combat the spread of COVID-19. Using difference-indifference and panel data regression to evaluate the determinants of social distancing, this paper confirms a statistically significant association between political support for Bolsonaro and social distancing. Since the Brazilian president is urging the population to ignore the COVID-19 "hysteria" and get back to a normal routine, the impact of social distancing rules on the circulation of people is lower at a statistically significant level in municipalities with a higher share of Bolsonaro voters.

This paper employs mobility matrices, univariate regressions and multivariate econometric techniques based on the recently published nationally representative household survey (PNAD-2014) from Brazil to investigate the relevance of the gendered patterns in the intergenerational transmission of educational attainment between parents and their descendants. The empirical evidence from these three different approaches is absolutely unanimous: In Brazil there is a significant variation in degree of mobility across genders, with a higher mobility level for daughters than for sons. The reason for this gender gap in mobility lies in the chances of attaining the educational levels: regardless of the educational background of the parents, females have a lower chance of remaining without school certificate and a greater probability to achieve a tertiary education. The results of this paper point out also that the educational attainment of children is strongly associated with the education of their most educated parent, regardless of their gender and this correlation is higher for female than for male. Concerning the evolution of the persistence in education over time, the findings indicate for both sexes a significant increase in intergeneration mobility over the last decades. However this positive evolution is much more modest when the relative deviation in education across generations is excluded from the investigation. Finally, this study has demonstrated that parental occupation levels and individual characteristics (race, locality of residence and year of birth) also have a statistically significant effect on the prospects for mobility.

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