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Population worldwide has experienced several challenges related to sustainable development, such as scarcity of natural resource, unsustainable consumption, poverty, injustice, violence, social inequality and natural disaster (including floods, tsunami and landslide). These issues interfere in sustainable development and target to achieve societal balance, structuring without compromising economic and environmental resources of future generations. The higher educational institutions are included in this context because they play a role in professional training and in education to promote sustainable practices. The higher educational institutions can assume a prominent position in the 2030 Agenda implementation for sustainable development of the United Nations, especially in the Goals 4 and 10, quality education and reduced inequalities, respectively. The purpose of this research study aims to develop a literature review and analyze the higher educational and sustainable themes, involving the Brazilian scenario.

This research study develops a literature review based on researches that involve higher educational and sustainable themes in the Brazilian scenario. Inclusion criteria are papers in English, with the search equations in their titles, and peer-reviewed papers. Paper publication year was not an exclusion criterion. This research aimed to understand opportunity and challenge processes in the Brazilian higher educational institutions and their actions, so that the Sustainable Development Goals are completely achieved and the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development is fulfilled. For this, a research central question was established: What are the opportunities and the challenges to achieve the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development in the Brazilian higher education?

A total of 636 papers were recovered. The “Higher Education AND Opportunities,” “Higher Education AND Challenge,” “Higher Education AND Challenges,” “Higher Education AND Opportunity,” “Brazilian AND Higher Education” and “Brazil AND Higher Education” search equations found, respectively, 165, 146, 131, 74, 62 and 25 papers, involving 94.8% of the total number of the papers found. The papers recovered enabled the vision of five clusters: policy; inclusion; culture; relationship; and environment, society and economy. The paper analyses found that innovation process, sustainable practical implementation and holistic look, involving professors and students, can allow the 2030 Agenda achievement.

The authors of this research study presented a framework based on the literature analyzed through five clusters: policy; inclusion; culture; relationship; and environment, society and economy, considered from opportunity and challenge perspectives. The authors introduced and discussed the Brazilian higher educations and their opportunities and challenges. The Brazilian panorama was linked with the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development, in specific, with the Goals 4 and 10. Implications of this research study are related to the higher educational opportunities and challenges in policy, inclusive, cultural, sustainable and relationship contexts, involving governmental and nongovernmental sectors, professors and students for the Brazilian educational improvement.

The purpose of this paper is to shed some light on the large differences between poor and rich Brazilian households regarding children's outcomes; that is, understanding inequality in health outcomes in the childhood in Brazil, examining the link between the health of Brazilian children and a variety of socioeconomic factors.

Logit models for some measures of child health (poor health, chronic diseases, hospitalization and visits to doctors and dentists). Individuals are grouped according to their income decile. Independent variables comprise indicators of socioeconomic status and demographic variables, primarily related to the family structure.

Results suggest that the true effect of family structure is more complex than the biological relationship of parents to children. There are large effects of family income distribution on child health indicators. When control variables are included, the magnitude of these effects changes. The addition of mothers' educational attainment to the set of controls reduces the estimated income effects. Also, the gradient in the health‐income relationship is a little steeper for older children.

Although there are numerous studies investigating the impact of family resources on health outcomes, whether income and family structure truly matters is still a debated issue. Brazil presents a huge level of income and until recently there has been little data with which to assess the nature and magnitude of the role, which socioeconomic factors play in the incidence and severity of health problems. The authors originally attempt to understand what it means to talk about inequality in health, and whether health inequality in Brazil is linked to income inequality.

This paper aims to explore the relationship between identity construction and consumption motivation of the socially active and wealthy Brazilian older adults, applying a new approach that focuses on important circumstances and life events retrieved through storytelling.

Using in-depth semi-structured interviews with socially active and wealthy older Brazilian consumers, this study adopts “Noting, Collecting and Thinking about Things” (NCT) and two-cycle coding methods to explore the qualitative data.

The results indicate the need to explore identity construction and consumption motivation in an integrated matter. Life circumstances and events help explain older consumers’ identities and its impact on main consumption motivations, which include self-expression, a need for social contact and relationships, attachment, detachment, nostalgia, knowledge appreciation and technology affinity, among others. An integrated approach allows for the identification of new consumption motivations.

The main consumption motivations identified in this study help delineate some new marketing strategies targeted to older consumers, such as taking into account the importance of building relationships with older customers, adopting family references to promote products and services, taking into account the value older customers place on technology usage and being connected with current matters and treating the elderly as a heterogeneous group, among others.

This paper focuses on an attractive and yet unexplored segment of older consumers in the literature, contextualizing their identity and consumption motivations in an integrated fashion, rather than studying these concepts in isolation. New marketing strategies targeted to the older consumers are identified.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of family structure on child labor by comparing children of nuclear families headed by the father with children of single-mother families headed by the divorced mother.

This paper uses data from Brazilian urban areas provided by the Brazilian Demographic Census of 2010. The empirical approach consists of the estimation of three treatment effect models: the Average Treatment Effect, IV Treatment Effect and Two-Stage Estimator proposed by Lewbel (2012).

The main findings show that children of single-mother families headed by divorced mothers are more likely to work, compared to children living with both parents. This paper found evidence of a direct effect of family structure parents’ determinant on child participation in labor. The main hypothesis is that the absence of the father paired with exposure to family stress arising from marital dissolution is an indicator toward child labor.

This study implies that in order to combat child labor effectively, it is important to understand deeply its several causes and consider ruptures in family structure, such as divorce, as one of these factors. In addition, location and family’s characteristics also play a role on the decision of child labor. For instance, boys living at metropolis areas have less chance to work. Family’s head education and non-work income affects positively the child well-being by reducing the probability of child labor. On the other hand, the number of siblings increases the chance of child labor. Finally, the results of this study suggest policies to raise awareness among parents about the negative effects of child labor on children during both childhood and adulthood, and that social policies need to act beyond legislation and enforcement, but including family mobilization.

This paper estimates the impact of family structure on child labor using an empirical approach to deal with the endogeneity problem of the treatment.

This study aimed to understand young children’s influence on family consumer behavior by examining children's and parents’ points of view in the Brazilian context.

Through an exploratory approach, the study used focus group discussions and in-depth interviews. Specifically, to elicit children’s perceptions, two focus groups were conducted, and to capture the perspective of the parents, 8 families, via 12 participants, were interviewed.

Children’s use of information provided by the media in their attempts to influence family decisions is perceived positively by parents because such behavior helps parents to fulfill their parental duties.

This study examines how young children perceive their influential role in family consumer decisions and how parents perceive this influence, given the existence of child adultization and adult infantilization.

The findings extend the discussions regarding the adultization of children and the infantilization of adults, revealing positive aspects of such a trend in association with consumer behavior.

The research analyzes the presence of two global brands – Fiat and International Federation of Association Football – in Brazilian demonstrations in conjunction with the 2014 World Cup. The purpose of this paper is to extend the brand cultural resonance construct and highlights its boundary-straddling nature. The analysis reveals the dynamics of brand meanings established including why some brands have their meanings enriched through collective appropriation, while others become vessels of negative content and targets of anti-consumption movements.

A multimethod approach, which included observation, analysis of cultural texts and in-depth interviews with 21 demonstrators, was adopted for the study.

The study extends the construct of brand cultural resonance proposing an additional facet, named Institutional Resonance. This dimension relates to the meanings that arise from a brand’s institutional role and interactions with other social institutions, like governments, the economy, religious, and educational systems. Institutional Resonance occurs when a certain brand becomes the archetypal representation of a social institution. This study also presents two forms of brand cultural resonance: arrows or targets. As arrows, brands lend their symbolic resources to the construction of protesters’ messages helping them to communicate their ideas. As targets, brands become social enemies and represent negative poles of social contradictions.

This study investigates consumer appropriation of marketers’ actions. The research depicts Institutional Resonance as an interactive and acute phenomenon which promotes a social negotiation on a playing field where different agents forge brand meanings and reputations.

In this study, a teacher-researcher examined his students’ conceptions of Whiteness within U.S. history courses at an ethnically and economically diverse urban high school. Using critical race theory as the lens, this mixed method study found most students could explain the role of race in history. Students of color were more likely to express racism is common in the current day, while White students were more likely to express racism as uncommon. Whites were more likely to express racism as on a dramatic decline or the result of a few individuals. This study highlights the positive impact a race-conscious social studies classroom can have on all students. It also shows the many barriers teachers face in helping White students understand their roles in a system privileging them because of their skin color.

This paper aims to evaluate the effects of a school-based obesity prevention program targeting Brazilian adolescent girls on dietary intake and meal frequency.

It was a six-month school-based group randomized controlled trial with female adolescents. The intervention was based on the Social Cognitive Theory and focused on ten nutrition and physical activity key messages. Diet intake was measured using a validated food frequency questionnaire, and the food items were aggregate into the eight food groups of the Brazilian Food Guide Pyramid. The meals frequency assessed were breakfast, lunch, dinner and snack-in-between-meals, the frequency ranged from never to everyday. Linear mixed models were used to examine the dietary effects and chi-squared test to identify proportional differences among groups in meal frequency. All analyses followed intention-to-treat principles and alpha levels of p ≤ 0.05 were set.

After six months from baseline, changes in the fruits (mean [SE] 12.48 kcal [7.86], p = 0.005), vegetables (8.80 kcal [7.11], p = 0.006) and sugar (−55.98 kcal [50.70], p = 0.036) groups were demonstrated. Proportional difference was shown for snack-in-between-meals (p = 0.001), and the frequency most cited was for “five to six days” per week.

The “Healthy Habits, Healthy Girls-Brazil” showed promise in the adolescents’ dietary intake and could be used as framework for future interventions. Also, the methods used for dietary intake can be enhanced and implemented for future studies.

Young consumers globally are susceptible to becoming compulsive shoppers. Having negative consequences and considering that compulsive shopping may originate from past family life experiences, this study aims to use human capital life-course and positive-activity theories to suggest a socio-psychological pathway for prevention. It also examined the mediating influence of happiness and money attitude.

University students in South Africa (N = 171) and in Germany (N = 202) were surveyed. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was used to test relationships and multi-group analysis (MGA) assessed cross-cultural differences.

Emotional family resources received during childhood positively impacted happiness at young adulthood, which was found to be a positive driver of budget money attitude. Budget money attitude in turn limited compulsive shopping for German young consumers but not for South Africans. Cross-cultural differences are also observed in mediating effects of happiness and budget money attitude.

This study is based on self-reported data from university students; this might limit the generalisability of findings.

A positive relationship between happiness and desirable money attitude was confirmed. This study additionally contributes by showing that for South African and German young consumers, adequate childhood emotional family resources is a happiness’ driver. This thus exposes the multiplier effects of simple acts of showing love and attention to children and how these family emotional resources can progressively limit dysfunctional consumer behaviour in the future.

Unlike complex psychotherapeutical and psychopharmacological treatments of compulsive buying that are being suggested, this study borrows from family, consumer and economic–psychological disciplines to suggest simple preventive measures.

Violence is still an alarming issue in Brazil, a country profoundly affected by social inequality. Since 1997, studies from UNESCO in Brazil have highlighted this worrying situation for youngsters from 15 to 24 years old, who are the portion of the population most exposed to violence, whether as victims, or agents. In terms of deaths that are caused by the so‐called external factors (i.e. homicides, traffic accidents and suicides), the quantitative data corresponding to the youth age groups are so high that they place Brazilian indices as the third highest in the world. In the light of the above, this paper provides a brief overview of the literature on the issue of violence in schools. In addition to that, the paper from the Director of the UNESCO Brasilia Office also analyses the series of studies and researches that UNESCO has been undertaking over the past years, an effort which would culminate into one of its most successful strategies to foster social inclusion through a community perspective, the “Making Room” program.