Understanding How Multi-Racial Families in Brazil Classify Their Children

Eric E. Borja, University of Texas at Austin

The goal of this paper is to examine the process of racial labeling in Brazil, one of the largest multi-racial countries in the world. The question guiding this paper is: given a child within a mix-race family, what is the probability of that child being labeled preto (black)? The study we propose utilizes a logit model to analyze a nationally representative dataset of children between the ages of zero and seven, pulled from the household survey PNAD in the years 2001-2009, to study what affects the probability of a mix-race family labeling their child as preto. The focus of this paper is important because by examining parent’s choices of how they label their children we gain an understanding of how Brazilians think about race and its heritability.