Title not available in English

Abstract

Brazilian youth now share family resources with fewer siblings and spend more time in intergenerational families. For example, the 1963 cohort of 14 year-olds had an average of 5.4 siblings, while the 1983 cohort had 2.3 siblings. The purpose of this paper is to examine how family size affected schooling for cohorts of children born pre- and post-demographic transition. Did the demographic transition benefit young people and contribute to an increase of the formal educational level? Did any such impact occur differently for male and female youth? The data from the 1977 and 1997 PNADs were used in order to answer these questions. Results from multivariate analyses were used for simulations and decompositions. The study shows that the number of siblings of young people in the older cohort contributed to their lower levels of schooling. In contrast, the smaller families of the younger cohort contributed to increase of the number of years in school in the 1990s. The redistribution of young people in small families explains in large part the improved schooling, even when traditional determinants of schooling are considered. The young women show higher rates of schooling than their male counterparts and are less prejudiced by belonging to large families. The final section of the article discusses implications for policies aimed at the well-being of Brazilian youth, as well as themes for future research.