During a 2023 survey, around 35 percent of respondents interviewed in Brazil said they belonged to the middle class. Meanwhile, 24.3 percent of the interviewees defined their social class as "low" and 25.7 percent stated that they were part of the middle class.Furthermore, Brazil's Gini coefficient, an indicator that measures wealth distribution, shows Brazil is one of the most unequal countries in the Latin American region.

ABSTRACT The article presents a panorama of socioeconomic hierarchies in late Nineteenth-century Brazil. Income analysis of social classes underpins these echelons. Within a theoretical and historical approach focused on social class, the article reckons that the Brazilian Empire was relatively egalitarian in terms of wages. A broad expressiveness of the lower classes, rather than a hypothetical robustness of the middle or the upper classes, explains this equality. The analysis of purchasing power and patterns of consumption made it possible to identify the degree of precariousness of the popular classes, as well as the existence of mainly urban middle classes. Lastly, salary data on the upper classes should not hide concentration of wealth, a main characteristic of the Empire’s decay, which was largely due to a polarized structure of slave property.

In Brazil, 70.6 percent of consumers earned at least the equivalent of the highest 40 percent of global income earners as of 2022 in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms. Those who earned at least the equivalent of the top 10 percent of global income earners stood at 7.4 percent.

The social stratification of food consumption is the main empirical object of this paper. It aims to investigate the possible homology between the practices in the field of food consumption, on the one hand, and the relative positions in social space occupied by social agents, on the other hand. Therefore, such an investigation may be included in a set of studies influenced by Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology of class, which the matizes the symbolic dimensional of class relations. Secondarily, this paper attempts to further our understanding of the mechanisms of social reproduction, especially regarding the role of lifestyles in the production and reproduction of inequalities and symbolic hierarchies.

Replication Data for: "The Elusive New Middle Class in Brazil" as published in BPSR, vol. 9, nº 3, 2015.

Overall, the percentage of the Brazilian population whose average per capita income was below the extreme poverty line experienced a downward trend between 2001 and 2020. In the case of the unemployed and inactive population, the share fluctuates. All statuses peak in 2021, being for the unemployed sector with the highest difference with 21.9 in share increase among them.

Abstract The 1990s, seen as the second lost decade, presented low dynamics of production and of the labor market in Brazil and in the Metropolitan Region of Natal (Northeastern Brazil). In this article, we consider that the labor market shows that the social classes are becoming increasingly segmented. Following this perspective, the article was based on Santos (2002) to study the segmentation of the labor market as a proxy for positions and segments of social classes in the analyzed reality. The hypothesis that guides the article is that possession of material assets, as well as qualification and command positions, are crucial to take on better positions in the structure of classes from the distribution standpoint. The analysis of the empirical data allows to increase the level of trust in the formulated hypothesis.

Abstract: This paper analyzes the effects of social class on the educational performance of young Brazilians students. Our theoretical approach in this study is based on Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of social class. We opted for a quantitative methodology using the database of the Basic Education Evaluation System (Saeb) tests carried out in 2013. We used descriptive statistics, correspondence analysis and multiple linear regression. Empirical results showed the persistence of the effects of social class on academic performance, although these results coexist with the impacts of variables related to schooling, individual life story and pedagogical aspects.

This data collection contains the results of a survey measuring political attitudes and behavior in Belo Horizonte, the capital city of the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, during the time of the gubernatorial elections in 1965-1966. Undertaken in two waves -- from July to November l965 -- (before the elections), and June to July 1966 (after the elections) the survey was administered to a total of 645 heads of households and housewives in Belo Horizonte. Data include the respondents' partisan affiliations and their voting behavior over the past few elections, as well as their attitudes toward Brazil's present government, political situation (e.g., agrarian reform, influence of communism, influence of labor unions, and the expected presidential election in 1966), problems facing the country, and their own political efficacy and trust in the government. Other variables describe respondents' mobility (residential, interoccupational, and generational), awareness of social class in Brazil, subjective social status and aspirations, and attitudes toward authority. Demographic and background data include occupation, education, age, marital status, race, sex, literacy, household composition, place of residence before Belo Horizonte, length of residence (if ever) on a farm, length of residence in Belo Horizonte, total monthly income of family, membership in associations, and socioeconomic status.

ABSTRACT In this work, it is shown that Brazil has already entered the past century behind the developed countries. The three main views to explain this fact are reviewed and a fourth, based on recent theoretical developments, is presented. This view explains the backwardness of the Brazilian economy due to the composition of its social classes, their historical roots and their interrelations.

Regardless of the employment status, the percentage of the population of Brazil whose average per capita income was below the poverty line experienced a downward trend between 2001 and 2014. In the case of the unemployed population, the share fell from 51.6 to 31.6 percent. However, the percentage of people in unemployment living under the poverty line has been oscillating since that year, and in 2023 the share stood at 38 percent. Furthermore, less than six percent of employees in Brazil were living under the poverty line that year.

Buyers: by Social Class: AB data was reported at 32.490 % in 2024. This stayed constant from the previous number of 32.490 % for 2023. Buyers: by Social Class: AB data is updated yearly, averaging 47.180 % from Dec 2000 (Median) to 2024, with 25 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 79.010 % in 2000 and a record low of 32.490 % in 2024. Buyers: by Social Class: AB data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by Brazilian Association of Eletronic Commerce. The data is categorized under Brazil Premium Database’s Domestic Trade – Table BR.HF002: E-commerce: Buyers Profile.

This study was conducted in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in August 1960, two to four weeks before the presidential election. The study first established the amount of political information that respondents had received through the news media. Further questions ascertained their interest in the coming election, their past voting decisions, and their party preferences. The respondents' perceptions of social class rating and their ideas about the distribution of wealth and improvement of living conditions were also explored. Demographic data include the respondents' occupation, education, age, marital status, race, sex, and socioeconomic status.

This dataset contains files for the replication of "Racial Social Norms among Brazilian Students: Academic Performance, Social Status and Racial Identification". Data comes from the project Attitudes and Relationships among Primary and High School Students. The project interviewed more than 4 thousand students in five Brazilian public schools. It contains information about the students, their beliefs, and friendship ties between them. Paper Abstract: Studies in the United States show that minority students might face a trade-off between better academic performance and peer acceptance, the so-called ``acting white''. This paper investigates the relationship between grades and social status in five Brazilian schools and how it differs between racial groups. Social status is measured using friendship ties among students, assigning higher status to students more central in the network. The racial composition of friendship ties is diverse, although friendships tends to favor racial peers, especially for black students. We find a positive correlation between grades and social status of nonwhite students that is driven by their status among their white classmates. This differs from the pattern observed in the US, where a negative correlation between minorities' grades and their status among racial peers is not compensated by their status among white students. We also investigate how academic performance is associated with racial identity choice conditional on skin color, finding a weak negative relationship between higher grades and the odds of classification as mixed-race.

The data for this study were collected in 1960 at 15 law schools in several states in Brazil. The study gathered family background data, including age and education of the respondents' siblings, national origins of parents and grandparents, education of parents, occupation of father, and social class of the respondents' families. The respondents' pasts were further explored through questions about their motivation for choosing law as a field, subjects other than law that they had studied, and average grades obtained. In addition, the study probed occupational intentions, frequency of travel abroad, voting participation, desirability of student political activity, and the respondents' involvement in student politics. Demographic information covers the respondents' age, gender, marital status, and city and state of birth.

Abstract Dentists should be alert not only to clinical variables, but also to socioeconomic, psychological and cultural factors, which have all been associated with the experience of dental caries. The aim of this study of was to assess social status and dental experience among Brazilian children. A cross-sectional study was conducted involving 1367 male and female children aged six and seven years enrolled at public and private schools in the city of Recife (Brazil) in 2013. The children at tending public schools were socioeconomically less privileged than those attending private schools. Data were collected through interviews and intraoral examinations. Caries experience was high (53.3%) in the overall sample, but less privileged children had larger percentages of decayed teeth and teeth that required extraction (p < 0.001). Children from less privileged social class had a greater chance of having a low (OR = 1.77 [95%CI 1.33 - 2.35]), moderate (OR = 4.41 [95%CI: 3.18 - 6,14]) and high (OR = 9.55 [95%CI 6.01 - 15.16]) caries experience. They also had a greater chance of never visiting a dentist (OR= 2.90 [95% CI 2.25 - 3.74]) and had dental anxiety (OR = 1.70 [95%CI 1.34-2, 16]). Socioeconomic status influences the dental caries experience, the visits to the dentist and the dental anxiety of the children analyzed.

This survey was administered online via Qualtrics from September 18, 2012 to October 11, 2012. Respondents were recruited via advertisements on Facebook, targeted to residents of Brazil ages 18 or older. The purpose of the survey was to investigate a) why Brazilians vote for clergy candidates for city council, b) what effect clergy voting recommendations have on decisions to support other candidates, and c) how Brazilians classify candidates in terms of race and social class. The survey contains experiments designed to test points a) and b), and it examines point c) by asking respondents to rate candidate photos.

In 2023, the prevalence of extreme poverty among black men and women in Brazil was higher than that observed in other demographic groups. In particular, the rate of extreme poverty among black men reached two percent, which was the highest among all demographic groups.

The article aims to analyze the inequalities in the professional trajectories of doctors and nurses in today’s Brazil, from a quantitative approach that allowed for the contrast of representative trajectories concerning different positions in the professional space. The data are derived from an online survey applied to a sample of 188 doctors and 186 nurses. It is assumed that trajectories tend to differ according to resources inherited from the family of origin, higher education training course (undergraduate and graduate), type of insertion in the labor market and career internship. The methodological approach applied the combination of a Multiple Correspondence Analysis and cluster analysis. The results contribute to the understanding of how inter- and intra-professional differences both reproduce and reinforce inequalities within the professional space.

In 2024, the top ten percent in Brazil earned an average of 8,034 Brazilian reals per month before income taxes. This is more than 11 times the average income of the bottom half, which was 713 reals per month in that year.