Education Quality, Income Inequality, and Female Labor Force Participation in Brazil

This paper examines the impact of education quality on income inequality among men and on female labor force participation. I introduce a new dataset on local education expenditures for a 64-year period. By matching education spending to the time and place where each person went to school, the data allow for granular measurement of human capital  differences with much more detail than measures like level of schooling or years of school attainment. They also permit measurement of human capital  differences and evolution over a much longer time period than the data that are typically available. I show that  differences in the quality of education received during childhood become significant determinants of income  differences among fully employed adult men. In a finding that is new to the literature, I report that school quality also significantly affects how adult women allocate their time between domestic labor and formal wage work.