Fábio D. Waltenberg

What Does It Take to Achieve Equality of Opportunity in Education ? An Empirical Investigation Based on Brazilian Data

Roemer s’ 1998 seminal work on equality of opportunity has contributed to the emergence of a theory of justice that is modern, conceptually clear and easy to mobilize in policy design. In this paper, we apply Roemer’s theory to education policy. We first analyze the reallocations of educational expenditure required to equalize opportunities (taken to be test scores close to the end of compulsory education). Using Brazilian data, we find that implementing an equal-opportunity policy across pupils of different socio-economic background, by using per-pupil spending as the instrucment, and ensuring that nobody receives less that 1/3 of the current national average, requires multiplying by 8.6 the current level of spending on the lowest achieving pupils. This result is driven by the extremely low elasticity of scores to per-pupil spending. As such, it implies large reallocations that are probably politically unacceptable. By exploiting our knowledge of the education production function, we then identify ways of reducing financial reallocations needed to achieve equality of opportunity. We show that the simultaneous redistribution of monetary and non-moneary inputs, like peer group quality (i.e. desegregation) and school effectiveness (i.e. equalizing access to the best-run schools), considerably reduces - by almost 50% - the magnitude of financial redistribution needed. Implementing an EOp policy would not come at any particular cost (or benefit) in terms of efficiency

Affirmative Action and Access to Higher Education in Brazil: The Significance of Race and Other Social Factors

Using recent data, this study examines the affirmative action programme of the Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (UERJ), the first Brazilian university to implement admissions quotas. The article analyses admissions records and finds that both the ratio of applications per place and minimum admission scores are considerably lower among quota students; scores in the admissions test are associated principally with socio-economic factors rather than racial ones; preparatory courses for the universitys admissions tests do not appear to be a substitute for the quota system in terms of improving access; few quota applicants would be admitted in the absence of the system; and the applicants who displace others come from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds. The article concludes that it is necessary to improve the quality of basic education in Brazil in order to enable disadvantaged applicants to compete.

Measuring Inequality of Opportunity in Education by Combining Information on Coverage and Achievement in PISA.

Measuring the distance between countries and the goal of equality of opportunity in education has been the focus of recent contributions in the economic literature, which have concentrated either on intergroup gaps in access to a given level of studies or on intergroup gaps in educational achievement. We argue that both aspects are important and interrelated and, as a consequence, should be measured simultaneously and combined in a composite index of equality of opportunity in education. Employing recent PISA data for a selected set of countries, rank reversals are observed with respect to orderings based upon a single dimension. The index can be generalized to include further dimensions, such as average scores or dissimilarity in access.