The low levels of human capital across most of the population within underdeveloped countries is believed to be a major obstacle for economic growth and development. This paper proposes an overlapping generations model, with fertility and education choices, to investigate the impact of public education on inequality and fertility across households of di erent levels of income. Testing the model calibrated with recent data from Brazil with di erent amounts and e ciency levels for public investment in education indicates that there is much to gain in terms of inequality reduction and income gains by improving quality of education than just spending more resources on it.