Income Shocks and Gender Inequality: The Chinese Shock and Its Effects on School Indicators of Brazilian Teenagers

Abstract

Income shocks, such as those originating in the international market, provide an opportunity to assess the effects of exogenous variations on important economic indicators. In this context, China’s entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001 triggered the so-called Chinese Shock. Such shocks may not be gender neutral, impacting men and women differently due to the heterogeneous distribution of workers in different sectors of economic activity. This paper seeks to investigate whether such a shock, evaluated in general and disaggregated by sectors specialized in female and male labor, also has an unequal impact on quantitative and qualitative educational indicators according to the student’s gender. In elementary school, the Chinese Shock negatively affects the enrollment of girls and, for those who remain enrolled, there is an improvement in performance, both in Portuguese and Mathematics. For boys, this improvement is also observed, but to a lesser extent, with a parallel increase in their enrollments. In Higher Education, this shock increases enrollment in higher education courses and the magnitude is the same for both genders. The exception occurs in
“Agriculture and Veterinary” courses, where women have a greater participation compared to men. As for the disaggregated shock between sectors that employ men and women differently, it is noted that the effects between the sexes are uneven only for the indicators of quality education, since they are always more intense for girls than for boys.