of residence. The STI-MAR contains the same information on those who have requested asylum in Brazil and is also maintained by the Federal Police. IBGE publishes population estimates of Brazil by municipality every year. It should be noted here that the population estimates of Venezuelan from the two sources may be an overestimate due to double counting and lack of updating of STI-MAR.

# **4.2 Summary Statistics**

## **4.2.1 Education**

The Venezuelan refugees and migrants, 20% of whom are below 20 years and with majority located in Roraima, have the potential to strain the education system. However, according to the education census of 2020, only about 37,738 or 45% of the Venezuelan school age children have been enrolled in school. The gross enrollment rate among the 0-5 years old cohort is about 18% while it is about 74% in the 6-14 years old cohort and only 40% in the 15-19 years old cohort. The Brazilians enrollment rate is much higher across all age groups. Figure 4a reveals that gross enrollment rate in the fundamental level (grade 1 to grade 9) is only about 74% among Venezuelans, compared to 100% among Brazilians, while in high school, the enrollment rate is about 40% among Venezuelans, compared to 80% among Brazilians. The drop-out rate between fundamental and high school seems to be the higher among Venezuelans than the Brazilians.<sup>26</sup> Among Brazilians enrolled in school, 33% are white, while only 15% of the Venezuelans enrolled in school are white. Among the white Venezuelans in school, 65% are in fundamental level and 11% are in high school, while among the non-white Venezuelans, 70% are in fundamental level and 11% are in high school. Given that about half of the Brazilian population is white, the relatively low presence of Brazilians white in the regular schooling needs to be explored further. Although race data on all Venezuelan refugees and migrants are not available, data for 2019 suggests that about 25% of the Venezuelans refugees and migrants are white, suggesting that white-nonwhite schooling disparity exists for both Venezuelan refugees and migrants and Brazilians.

Figure 4b shows that average Venezuelans tend to be older than Brazilians in lower grades, from grade 1 to grade 5, suggesting that Venezuelans are more likely to be mismatched to class. Difficulty in evaluating Venezuelan students’ prior knowledge and language barrier may lead to Venezuelans being enrolled into the lowest grade possible, which may not only demotivate Venezuelan students from learning but also add to additional cost to the government. Some cities in Brazil are already responding to this mismanagement. For example, in Manaus, some teachers and school sta↵have received Spanish-language training, and in the city of Pacaraima, schools have developed Portuguese language classes focused on the needs of Venezuelan students (Selee & Bolter, 2020).

> 26Since there is no data on those, who are not dropping out, this paper cannot investigate the reasons behind the high dropout rate but better outside opportunities, lower returns to higher education, lacking the knowledge of the official language, along with the tradition of boys being the breadwinner, are most likely to contribute to the phenomenon.

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