The article examines the process through which education from the 1970s onwards became a key variable for explaining the inequality in Brazilian incomes and a public policy tool for economists. Among other factors, this resulted from: (1) the struggle of professional educators between the 1930s and 1950s to produce a policy-oriented body of knowledge concerning education; and (2) the success of economists during the 1960s in imposing their own interpretative models of Brazilian life, displacing the educators. In both periods, governments and transnational agencies facilitated an international circulation of people and ideas, manipulated as a resource by those involved in this competition.
Education and inequality; International circulation; Economists and educators