Desigualdade de oportunidades educacionais: seletividade e progressão por série no Brasil, 1986 a 2008

This article aims to contribute to the understanding of the inequality of educational opportunities in Brazil, identifying the magnitude of the relationships between social origins and the probability of progression on the educational scale between 1986 and 2008. We apply the Grade Progression Probability concept (RIOS-NETO, 2004) on the individual level through the estimation of school transitions logistic model. We show that men have lower chances of school progression, as well as black, residents in rural areas and the non-residents in metropolitan areas, and that those differences are not neutral with respect to the transition considered: we found that those differentials tend to decrease along the educational career. Important evidence was that, in the case of race, and situation/area of residence, there was a reduction in the advantage of whites or people with residence in metropolitan or urban areas. Also we tested if the two hypothesis proposed by Mare (1980) to the educational stratification are valid to Brazil. The first one, which states that the effect of the social origins decreases along the educational trajectory, could be not be corroborated by none of the measures employed (education, sex, race and occupation of the head of the family; number of siblings). Regarding the second hypothesis, Mare states that the educational expansion between two periods would reduce the inequality of educational opportunities in a given grade. Overall, we show that this hypothesis is corroborated when the education and occupational status of the family’s head is considered on the first school transitions between 1986 and 2008. We can conclude, therefore, that the educational policies that promoted the universal access on the education system and on the elementary level were effective on reducing inequality of educational opportunities, measured by our Proxy variables.