Tertiary Education Access Rate by Income Decile, Historical Series

PNAD/PNADC
Censo
Acesso
Série Histórica
Tertiary education access rate by income decile, historical line series from 1992 onward.
Published

September 3, 2026

Overview

This figure tracks, from 1992 onward, the share of young Brazilians aged 18–24 who had ever enrolled in tertiary education at some point in their lives, broken down by household income decile — from the poorest tenth (D1) to the richest tenth (D10). It shows how unevenly access to higher education expanded across the income distribution over more than three decades. Diamond markers overlay four Demographic Census years as an independent check on the survey-based series. Data come from Brazil’s main household surveys (PNAD/PNAD Contínua) and the Demographic Census, both from IBGE.

Methodology

Each series is the share of 18–24-year-olds who had ever enrolled in tertiary education (ens_sup, cumulative access), by decile of per-capita household income and for the population as a whole. Deciles are computed within each survey year and source, over the full population with strictly positive income. The harmonized series uses PNAD Anual through 2015 and PNAD Contínua from 2016 onward, so each year draws on a single source; the rural North is absent from PNAD Anual 2004–2015. Lines are interrupted in years without a survey: 2000 and 2010 (census years) and 2020–2021 (excluded for pandemic-related data-quality reasons). Confidence intervals are 95% intervals: Wilson score intervals with the Kish effective sample size under a design effect of 2.0 for PNAD Anual (1992–2015), and design-based intervals from exact complex-survey estimation via survey::svydesign() for PNAD Contínua (2016–2025). Diamonds mark independent validation points from the long-form samples of the 1991, 2000, 2010, and 2022 Demographic Censuses (via censobr); their 95% confidence intervals span at most 0.6 to 0.7 percentage points, narrower than the diamond markers themselves. The 1991 census reports income in fourteen ordinal ranges, from which deciles are approximated. Government labels indicate the president in office.

How to Cite

If you use this figure or the pipeline behind it, please cite both the dissertation and this specific analysis. References follow APA 7th edition.

Dissertation (in preparation; the entry will be updated after the defense):

Mançano, T. (2026). Inequality in access to tertiary education in Brazil: Household incomes, reforming policies, and the politics of who gets in (1990s–2020s) [Unpublished master’s thesis]. University of São Paulo.

This figure and pipeline:

Mançano, T. (2026, September 3). Tertiary education access rate by income decile, historical series [Figure and reproducible pipeline]. Open Data Analysis. https://mancano-tales.github.io/open-data-analysis/posts/decil-acesso-serie-historica/

In text: (Mançano, 2026) — when citing several analyses from this catalog in the same work, APA distinguishes them as 2026a, 2026b, … in the order they appear in the reference list.

BibTeX:

@mastersthesis{Mancano2026Thesis,
  author = {Man\c{c}ano, Tales},
  title  = {Inequality in Access to Tertiary Education in Brazil: Household
            Incomes, Reforming Policies, and the Politics of Who Gets In
            (1990s--2020s)},
  school = {University of S\~{a}o Paulo},
  year   = {2026},
  type   = {Master's thesis},
  note   = {Unpublished; Graduate Program in Political Science}
}

@misc{Mancano2026_decil_acesso_serie_historica,
  author       = {Man\c{c}ano, Tales},
  title        = {Tertiary education access rate by income decile, historical series},
  year         = {2026},
  month        = sep,
  howpublished = {Open Data Analysis, \url{https://mancano-tales.github.io/open-data-analysis/posts/decil-acesso-serie-historica/}},
  note         = {Figure and reproducible pipeline. Source code: \url{https://github.com/mancano-tales/open-data-analysis}, folder posts/decil-acesso-serie-historica/. Accessed YYYY-MM-DD}
}

A permanent version (Git tag + Zenodo DOI) will be linked here once the dissertation is defended; until then, cite the page URL above and add the date you accessed it (source code: https://github.com/mancano-tales/open-data-analysis, folder posts/decil-acesso-serie-historica/).

Pipeline

This figure draws on the PNAD / PNAD Contínua Harmonization, 1992–2025 panel.

Run these scripts in this order, from the project root (each one writes to data-raw/, which the next one reads):

  1. shared-pipeline/pnadc/000_PNADC_Download_Consolidate.R — downloads PNAD Contínua 2012–2025 (1st interview) with PNADcIBGE::get_pnadc() into data-raw/pnadc_raw/ and consolidates it into data-raw/pnadc_consolidado_2012_2025_interview1.rds
  2. shared-pipeline/pnadc/020_PNAD_Anual_Manual_Import_2001_2015.R — downloads the PNAD Anual 2001–2015 microdata from the IBGE FTP into data-raw/pnad_anual_raw/ and imports them into data-raw/harmonizing-br-data/output/PNAD_Anual_2001_2015.parquet
  3. shared-pipeline/pnadc/050_PNAD_Historica_Manual_Import_1992_1999.R — same for PNAD Anual 1992–1999 (PNAD_Anual_1992_1999.parquet)
  4. shared-pipeline/pnadc/035_Splice_Microdados.R — splices PNAD Anual and PNAD Contínua into the harmonized panel — Microdados_Todas_Idades_1992_2025.parquet and Microdados_Jovens_18_24_1992_2025.parquet in data-raw/harmonizing-br-data/output/ (sources shared-pipeline/utils/codigos_curso_pnad.R)
  5. shared-pipeline/censo/040_Censo_Pontos_Validacao.R — builds the Demographic Census validation points with censobr (Censo_Pontos_Validacao_1991_2022.parquet). The 2022 point needs IBGE’s controlled-access sample microdata (see Reproducibility below); the diagnostic comparison with Salata et al. (2025) at the end of the script is skipped unless their replication parquet is present in data-raw/Salata-etal-2025/
  6. plot.R — reads Microdados_Jovens_18_24_1992_2025.parquet, Censo_Pontos_Validacao_1991_2022.parquet and data-raw/pnadc_consolidado_2012_2025_interview1.rds; writes the figure to output/figures/decil-acesso-serie-historica/ — compare it with this post’s thumbnail.png

All of the upstream steps above are Tier A and are also run, in this same order, by shared-pipeline/build_public_data.R.

Reproducibility

Tier: A/B

The PNAD/PNADC series and the 1991, 2000, and 2010 census diamonds are Tier A: public data, accessible via package/API without any credential (PNADcIBGE, censobr, sidrar, ipeadatar). The 2022 census diamond is Tier B: it depends on the sample microdata’s controlled-access release from IBGE, requested manually at microdados.ibge.gov.br — censobr::import_microdata22_controlado() only processes a zip file you already have in hand, it does not fetch it for you. Run the scripts in shared-pipeline/ in numeric order to reconstruct the intermediate data; reproducing everything except the 2022 diamond needs no prior request.