finally conditional cash transfers are responsible for of the declining inequality although brazil spends less than of gdp on these this is a first indication of how effective conditional cash transfers are in the quest for more income equality an observation on which there seems to be broad consensus in the literature eg barros et al source ipea household data for suggest that almost half of the differences in labour incomes can be explained by education as measured by years of schooling even after controlling for other differences ferreira de souza indeed youth are staying in school longer than in the past and the starkest changes have occurred among people from the lower income strata figure panel a among the two lowest income quintiles enrolment rates of year olds have more than doubled to while for ages more than of children are in school pnad higher school attendance has also translated into higher educational attainments