The Contentious Returns to Education: Evidence from Protests in Brazil

Jorge Mangonnet

Columbia University

PhD Candidate

May 2, 2018 12:00PM E53-482, The Millikan Room

The Contentious Returns to Education: Evidence from Protests in Brazil 

A widespread consensus in the social sciences emphasizes the positive relationship between education and protest. Anecdotal evidence suggests that increasing education was one of the crucial determinants of the historical street mobilizations that occurred in Brazil in June 2013. Drawing on a novel source of public opinion data, we investigate whether higher educational attainment predicts protest participation in Brazil between May and July 2013. We use a series of hierarchical logistic regressions that allow us to test the effect of both individual education and socioeconomic conditions of the administrative region where respondents reside. Our results show that educational achievement increases the probability of joining a demonstration, with such effect being greater for respondents who went to college. We contend that these findings should be viewed as the long-term consequence of access to education, as improvements in Brazilian educational policy for the past two decades drove young citizens to engage in contentious behavior in a democracy traditionally defined by low levels of protest participation. Our study constitutes the first comprehensive, multilevel examination of the impact of education on attendance to the 2013 protests in Brazil by relying on well-timed survey data collected immediately before and after these events