King's College London

A new study of educational outcomes in Brazil shows that girls and non-White students consistently score lower than their male and White peers, but the extent of these gaps is shaped significantly - and independently - by household income and relative socioeconomic standing.

The research analyses performance in ENEM, the country’s national secondary school exam that determines university admission and thereby plays an important role in social mobility.

Analysing data from over 7.7 million pupils across seven waves of the ENEM, combined with qualitative insights from teacher interviews and focus group discussions conducted in Rio de Janeiro, the study finds that disadvantage is rarely the product of a single factor. Instead, it emerges from the interplay of multiple axes of inequality.

The study, co-authored with researchers from the University of East Anglia and the University of York, highlights the value of mixed-methods approaches in education research and offers lessons for policymakers worldwide.

Teachers interviewed for the study highlighted how machismo and early pregnancy often derail girls’ academic ambitions, particularly in poorer households, reflecting the role of patriarchal norms and household responsibilities in constraining girls’ educational attainment.

However gender gaps narrow with both higher absolute income as well as relative status.

Racial disparities follow a different pattern. While higher income reduces gaps between White and non-White students, better relative status widens attainment gaps, or in other words Whites suffer disproportionately from relatively deprivation.

Teacher interviews suggest that resilience and adaptation mechanisms due to experience may buffer non-Whites against the psycho-social effects of deprivation, whereas Whites experience any mismatch between expectations and reality far more sharply, and lack those same mechanisms.

Published in World Development, the findings underscore the need for policies that address overlapping sources of disadvantage rather than treating them in isolation.

“It is crucial to both to disentangle economic status and recognise the role of relative deprivation alongside income, and these interplay with gender and race” said Dr Kumar. “Our findings suggest that measures to improve living standards, tackle structural sexism and racism, and provide mental health support could help reduce attainment gaps and promote social mobility”.

Read more:

Sunil Mitra Kumar, Lucio Esposito, Adrián Villaseñor, Sandra Macedo (2026) Gender, race and their interplay with economic status: intersectionality and asymmetric jeopardies in Brazilian education. World Development 199 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107232