Abstract

The school attendance of 4-5 years-old children raised from 3.7% to 78.9% between
1970 and 2018 in Brazil. This paper analyses the preschool expansion process in Brazil
in the last 50 years, documenting the preschool attendance and discussing how sociodemographic
and institutional factors usually associated with the expansion are related to the
process. The paper shows that female labor force participation, public investments, and demographic
factors were to some extent important but not crucial to the expansion of pre-school attendance in Brazil. Furthermore, the observed expansion seems to be a result of uncoordinated
and unplanned policies implemented in the period.

JEL Classification: H52, I21; N36.