Brazilians
Brazilians are citizens of Brazil. A Brazilian can also be a person born abroad to a Brazilian parent or legal guardian as well as a persons who acquired Brazilian citizenship. Brazil is a multiethnic society, which means that it is home to people of many different ethnic origins. As a result, majority of Brazilians do not equate their nationality with their ethnicity, usually embracing and espousing both simultaneously.
In the period after the colonization of the Brazilian territory by Portugal, during much of the XVI century, the word "Brazilian" was given to the Portuguese merchants of Brazilwood, designating exclusively the name of such profession, since the inhabitants of the land were, in most of them, indigenous or Portuguese born in Portugal or in the territory now called Brazil. However, long before the independence of Brazil, in 1822, both in Brazil and in Portugal, it was already common to attribute the Brazilian gentile to a person, usually of clear Portuguese descent, resident or whose family resided in the State of Brazil, belonging to the Portuguese Empire. During the lifetime of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves, however, there was confusion about the nomenclature.
Definition
According to the Constitution of Brazil, a Brazilian citizen is:- Anyone born in Brazil, even if to foreign born parents. However, if the foreign parents were at the service of a foreign State, the child is not Brazilian;
- Anyone born abroad to a Brazilian father or a Brazilian mother, with registration of birth in a Brazilian Embassy or Consulate. Also, a person born abroad to a Brazilian father or a Brazilian mother who was not registered but who, after turning 18 years old, went to live in Brazil;
- A foreigner living in Brazil who applied for and was accepted as a Brazilian citizen.
A foreigner can apply for Brazilian citizenship after living for four uninterrupted years in Brazil and being able to speak Portuguese. A native person from an official Portuguese language country can request the Brazilian nationality after only 1 uninterrupted year living in Brazil. A foreign born person who holds Brazilian citizenship has exactly the same rights and duties of the Brazilian citizen by birth, but cannot occupy some special public positions such as the Presidency of the Republic, Vice-presidency of the Republic, Minister of Defense, Presidency of the Senate, Presidency of the House of Representatives, Officer of the Armed Forces and Diplomat.
The population in Brazil is over 204,519,000.
History and overview
Brazilians are mostly descendants of Portuguese settlers, post-colonial immigrant groups, enslaved Africans and Brazil's indigenous peoples. Along with other immigrants of who arrived in Brazil, from the 1820s well into the 1970s, most of the settlers were Portuguese, Italians, Spaniards, Arabs and Germans, with significantly large numbers of Japanese, Armenians, Romani, Greeks, Poles, Ukrainians and Levantine Arabs.The colonization period (1500 to 1822)
The three principal groups were Native Brazilians, European colonizers and African labor.- Brazil was inhabited by an estimated 2.4 million Amerindians before the first settlers arrived in the 16th century. They had been living there since the Pleistocene and still exist in many different tribes and ethnicities, amounting to the hundreds, giving them varying features, shapes and shades. There are different estimates for the Indigenous population around 1498, when the cohort commanded by Duarte Pacheco Pereira first set foot in Brazilian territory, followed by Pedro Álvares Cabral and Amerigo Vespucci in 1500 and 1502, with figures revolving between 2.4 million and 3.1 million. What is more accurate is that about three quarters of them died from contracted diseases brought by colonizers and conflicts, while the remaining were pushed to the Amazon Basin, sometimes migrating beyond the borders with Hispanic provinces. It is also important to mention that a strong assimilation by miscegenation with local populations occurred, where Natives living under Jesuit protection and having a monastic life decided to leave for the life in towns. The European diseases spread quickly along the indigenous trade routes, and whole tribes were likely annihilated without ever coming in direct contact with Europeans. Today, 517,000 Indigenous people live in reservations and 160 thousand speak assorted Native languages, whereas millions of Brazilians have at least some degree of Amerindian ancestry due to the mentioned interracial encounters.
- The country was officially discovered by Portugal in 1500 and received about 724,000 Portuguese colonizers, mostly males, who settled there until the end of Colonial Brazil. But other sources even claim that the given numbers of total entrances were clearly surpassed. The Jesuits asked the Portuguese Crown to ship orphaned women under royal wardship for marriage with the settlers; they were known as Órfãs d'El-Rei. Daughters of noblemen who died overseas administrating captaincies in the colonies or in battle for the king would marry settlers of higher rank. Bahia's port in the Northeast received one of the first groups of orphans in 1551.
- These other people came from different nationalities - but the by far most mentioned are the Dutch. Hence, under the rule of Dutch Brazil in the northeastern part of the country, from 1630 to 1654, a comparatively small but still notable number of Dutch settlers and some Jewish People arrived, the latter seeking religious freedom. These Jews founded the first Synagogue in the Americas, named Kahal Zur Israel Synagogue in the city of Recife.
The Jews who mostly left Brazil took off to what was then named New Amsterdam, today New York City, and founded the oldest Jewish congregation in the United States, the Congregation Shearith Israel. The ones who stayed, converted into Christianity and were then known as New Christians or Marranos, who sometimes practiced Crypto-Judaism. Even if the Jewish population under Dutch Brazil not surpassed a few thousand individuals, a considerably higher number of New Christians, in the past simply absorbed as Portuguese colonizers, arrived in Colonial Brazil - especially in the first centuries after 1500. They entered Brazil fleeing from the Inquisition or were deported by the Kingdom of Portugal and also Spain, latter being known as Degredados, someone who was sentenced or forced to exile. This also included Romani People from the Iberian Peninsula, what partially explains the curiously high numbers for a western country. Brazil has the second largest Gypsy population in the Americas after the United States, having also received Roma people from Central and Eastern Europe, as well as the Baltic countries during the 20th century.
- As a result of the Atlantic slave trade from the mid-16th century until 1855, an estimated 3.6 million African people, also from many different countries and ethnicities were brought to Brazil, giving the country the Americas' largest population with some African ancestry. Many of the slaves suffered under severe conditions and the mortality rates were pretty high, what led to the foundation of Quilombola communities throughout the country. A small number of the slaves in the state of Bahia were actually Muslims; they produced a revolt in the city of Salvador that was quickly tamed by the army.
The Great Immigration (1820 until the 1970s)
In this period, people from all over the world officially entered Brazil, the vast majority of them Europeans.Between 1820 and the 1950s, Brazil received around 5,686,133 European immigrants, including a thriving Jewish population. In addition, 950,000 Asians settled in Brazil throughout the 20th century, including considerable numbers of Middle Easterners or Christian Levantine Arabs and 270,000 Japanese, the highest figure among East Asians.
- Back then, nearly 70 % of those immigrants originated from Southern Europe.
- A second wave of Portuguese people arrived, this time with more than 1,8 million immigrants.
- Furthermore, around 1.6 million Italians were responsible for a massive immigration wave, consequently composing the biggest European follow-up group the country has received after its colonizers.
- Spaniards also arrived in rather high numbers, with around 700,000 immigrants mainly from Andalusia and Galicia.
Note: Brazil is also home to other Southern European populations, mainly Greeks, but they are by far the smallest groups with origins in South Europe.
2) The remaining 30 % were composed of Other Europeans, Asians, Africans and Americans.
- Other Europeans:
- Eastern Europeans were relatively numerous, with more than 350,000 listed immigrants. This included 154,000 Poles, around 40,000 Ukrainians and smaller numbers of Russians. These immigrants were searching for better opportunities - a few thousand Belarusians were also among them. Slavs from other regions migrated as well, here mainly South Slavs like Bulgarians and Croats, but also Czechs and Slovaks, with moderate numbers of Slovenes and others. Hungarians and Romanians were among the non-Slavic Eastern Europeans and were the biggest groups after the Poles, Russians and Ukrainians.
- Northern Europeans were the least numerous, but also present. More than 78,000 Britons, mainly under English passports, and Scots entered the country. They dispersed to different regions: a few Irish people went to already urbanized regions. Scandinavian people, mainly Swedes and Norwegians, were both listed and sent over 40,000 immigrants each, as well as around 17,000 Danes. 3,400 Estonians and a rather small number of Finns were also present. Even smaller and therefore often forgotten, an influx from Icelanders and Faroese was recorded, but they still left few thousand descendants. The Baltic region was also entirely present, where Lithuanians composed the most numerous group, with over 50,000 entrances, followed by a much smaller number of Latvians.
- European Jews of Ashkenazi origin, more precisely around 48,000 people from several countries, chose Brazil as their destination. Ashkenazi Jews were first documented during Imperial times, when the liberal second emperor of Brazil welcomed a few thousands of families facing persecution in Europe during the 1870s and 1880s. Two heavier influxes took place during the 20th century. The earliest right after the Great War and the second inrush between the 1930s and 1950s.
Brazil has also seen an influx from North African Jews of Sephardic origin coming from mainly Morocco and Egypt, which were counted extra.
- Asians:
- East Asians, the majority composed of Japanese immigrants, also arrived in formidable numbers, where the first ship landed in 1908, surpassing 250,000 immigrants. But Chinese and Koreans also have traditions of immigrating to Brazil, especially after the 1950s, with around 200,000 and 100,000 immigrants respectively.
- Pan-Americans:
- South Americans were strongly represented by Argentines since the 18th century and always had a strong community in the country. They still form one of the largest South American immigrant groups in Brazil, nowadays only surpassed by Bolivians. Uruguayan citizens after the country's independence from the Empire of Brazil were also noticeable throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.
- Africans:
- Other Africa-born people mainly include Dutch South Africans and people from the former Portuguese Empire, mainly Angola. Here people of several ethnicities immigrated.
Note: Dozen other immigrant groups form sizable communities with some varying number of descendants. Only in this period, the port of Santos, São Paulo, which was widely known as the most important entrance of immigrants in Brazil, received people from more than 60 different countries. Other important ports, which occasionally received other immigrant groups as the before mentioned, were the ones in the cities of Rio de Janeiro, Porto Alegre, Vitória, Recife etc.
Modern times (1970 to now)
Not to be compared with the great immigration before, a still ongoing influx from Africa and South America and the Caribbean is happening since the late 1960s. Asian immigrants as well as European immigrants are thriving in varying numbers.After 1975 large groups of Dutch Surinamese or Boeroes immigrated to Brazil due to the independence in Suriname. Most of them settled in the countryside of São Paulo and Paraná where there are thriving Dutch Brazilian colonies.
Current foreign population
In 2011, the country was home to 1.5 million foreign born people, more than twice as of 2009.
The numbers still could be higher, as there are many undocumented people in Brazil as well. For both, the documented and undocumented, most of the foreigners come from Portugal, Bolivia, China, Paraguay, Angola, Spain, Argentina, Japan and the United States. The major work visas concessions were granted for citizens of the United States and the United Kingdom.
Lusitanian immigration never ceased throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Portuguese people in diaspora settled in Brazil especially during the 1970s coming from former Portuguese colonies like Macau or Angola after its independence.
An additional figure of 1.2 million Portuguese arrived between 1951 and 1975 to settle mostly in the Southeast.
Nowadays, Lusitanians constitute the biggest group of foreigners living in the country, with over 690,000 Portuguese nationals currently living in Brazil. The vast majority arrived in the last decade. The first semester of 2011 solely had an increase of 52 thousand Portuguese nationals applying for a permanent residence visa while another large group was granted Brazilian citizenship.
Today, people of more than 220 nationalities have communities in Brazil, 40 of them more than 10,000 people.
Refugees
In 2014, Brazil was home to 5,208 refugees from 79 different nationalities. The three largest refugee ancestries were Syrian, Colombian and Angolan. In addition to these numbers, there are several thousand people who had entered the country and are still waiting for the government to acknowledge their refugee status, as 1,830 people from Bangladesh in 2013 alone and other 1,021 people from Syria and 799 people from Senegal, for example.
Brazil is today home to 4.5 thousand Afghans and was a destination for Vietnamese boat people in the past.
Dispersal of races and colours in the country
Note: The ethnic composition of Brazilians is not uniform across the country.- Due to its large influx of European immigrants in the 19th and 20th centuries, São Paulo, and the Southern Region have a White majority. Rio de Janeiro has a sizable white population slightly over 50% of the total population.
The cities of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Porto Alegre, Curitiba, Brasília and Belo Horizonte have the largest populations of Ashkenazi Jews.
Most East Asians, especially Japanese Brazilians, the largest group, live in São Paulo and Paraná. Most Koreans also live in São Paulo whereas the Chinese diaspora is spread particularly throughout the Southeast. Rio de Janeiro has a large Chinese population following São Paulo.
- The Northeastern Region, the first occupied and therefore most mixed region, has larger numbers of people with darker features, with stronger African, Romani, Amerindian and Sephardi influences from Colonial Brazil. The majority there is composed of Pardo people, who are of a brownish or darker phenotype with light to dark features, followed by Whites and then by people with mostly African blood - Bahia and Maranhão have the biggest Black African populations in Brazil. The individual appearance of Pardo people varies extremely, but generally all types and colours of hairs, eyes and skin are involved. But in fact, minorities in the White and Black populations consider themselves as Pardo. Moreover, some people in the Roma, Sephardic, Arab and Asian population classify themselves as Pardo, due to miscegenation with other races.
- Northern Brazil, largely covered by the Amazon Rainforest, is also mostly Pardo, due to a stronger Amerindian influence.
- The two remaining South Eastern states and the Central-Western Brazil have a more balanced ratio among different racial groups.
In the 2005 detailed census, for the first time in two decades, the number of White Brazilians did not exceed 50% of the population. On the other side, the number of pardos people increased and all the others remained almost the same. According to the IBGE, this trend is mainly because of the revaluation of the identity of historically discriminated ethnic groups.
Brazil is said to be among the most miscegenated countries in the world, as since the country was discovered and during the colonial period intermarriage between races was never illegal and common. Those of full ancestry are usually the Brazilians who can trace back their ethnicity to more recent immigration from the monarchical period in the 19th century until the Republican 20th and 21st centuries. Still, many Brazilians can not trace back their real origin easily. For instance, European family names which were difficult to pronounce were commonly changed to easier Portuguese surnames. In basic terms, it could be said that half of Brazilians are descendants of populations from the colonial era and the other half made of modern immigration. Brazil is a true melting pot of Europeans, Asians, Africans and Indigenous people, who either are in the single group or a mixture of various different backgrounds and races.
White Brazilians
Whites constitute the majority of Brazil's population regarding the total numbers within a single racial group, having the most numerous population in the Southern Hemisphere. These are people who have origins in any of the white populations of Europe.The country has the second largest White population in the Americas, with around 91,051,646 people.
And White Brazilians make up the third largest White population in the world, after the United States and Russia, also counting in total numbers.
The majority of European Brazilians came from the Great Immigration period, which was the large European influx after steps had been taken for "whitening policies" during the Monarchy and Early Republican periods. Those policies also sought labor and also were made in order to avoid the foreign invasion threat of sparsely populated areas in the South. Various other groups derive from colonial times and post-war decades.
There are people of European descent distributed throughout the entire territory of Brazil, however, Southeast and South Brazil have the largest White populations. Whereas the Southeast region has the largest absolute numbers, 79.8% of the population in the three southernmost states has European or Caucasian phenotype.
The state of Santa Catarina in Southern Brazil has the highest percentage, being almost 90% European. São Paulo in the Southeast has the fourth highest rate, but is the state with the most Whites in absolute numbers of 30 million Whites, mainly from Europe, also having largest Levantine Arab and Jewish populations.
Brazil is home to 240 immigrant or extoctone languages, most of them European languages. Standard German and German dialects make the second most spoken language in Brazil with around 4 million bilingual speakers or 2% of the population, other Caucasoid immigration languages are Italian, Venetian or Talian dialect, Polish, Castilian, Ukrainian, Russian, Dutch, Hebrew, Yidish, Lithuanian and Lettish, French, Norwegian, Swedish, English,
Hungarian, Finnish, Arabic, Danish, Bulgarian, Croatian, Catalan, Galician, Greek, Armenian, Czech, Slovakian, Slovenian, Romanian, Serbian, Vlax Romani, Georgian, Turoyo and Baltic or Lithuanian Romani.
Assorted German dialects and Venetian or Talian share co-official status with Portuguese in several municipalities.
| Region | Percentage |
| North Brazil | 23.5% |
| Northeast Brazil | 28.8% |
| Central-West Brazil | 41.7% |
| Southeast Brazil | 56% |
| Southern Brazil | 78% |
Mixed (multiracial) people
Multiracials constitute the second largest group of Brazil, with around 84,7 million people. The term Pardo or mixed race Brazilian is a rather complex one. Multiracial Brazilians appear in hundreds of different shades, colours and backgrounds. They are typically a mixture of colonial and post-colonial Europeans with descendants of African slaves and the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. Some individuals may also descend from Maghreb people, Jews, Middle Eastern and Egyptian people, or a more recent ancestry from East or South Asia. Skin colours can vary from light to dark. The caboclo or mestiço population, those who are a miscegenation of Native and European, revolves around 43 million people. Genetic studies conducted by the geneticist Sergio D.J. Pena of the Federal University of Minas Gerais have shown that the Caboclo population is made of individuals whose DNA ranges from 70% to 90% European with the remaining percentage spanning different Indigenous markers. Similar DNA tests showed that people self-classified as Mulatto or White and Black mix, span from 62% to 85% European. The Pardo category in Brazil also includes 800 thousand Gypsies or Roma people, most of them coming from Portugal but also different countries in Eastern Europe and the Baltics. Eurasians can also be classified as Pardo. The majority of them consisting of Ainoko or Hafu, individuals who are a miscegenation between Japanese and European.Recent research has suggested that Asians from the early Portuguese Eastern Empire, known as Luso-Asians first came to Brazil during the sixteenth century as seamen known as Lascars, or as servants, slaves and concubines accompanying the governors, merchants and clergy who has served in Portuguese Asia. This first presence of Asians was limited to Northeast Brazil, especially Bahia, but others were brought as cultivators, textile workers and miners to Pará and other parts of the Northeast.
The largest populations with Pardo individuals are found in northern and northeastern Brazil, with many inhabiting the states of Mato Grosso, Goiás, Espírito Santo, Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro State, São Paulo State and Paraná State, as well as the Federal District. While the occurrence of Pardos is not uniform across the country, there are states with more people of mixed background than others. It also can happen that Pardos constitute significant numbers within single regions in states.
| Region | Percentage |
| North Brazil | 71.2% |
| Northeast Brazil | 62.7% |
| Central-West Brazil | 50.6% |
| Southeast Brazil | 35.69% |
| Southern Brazil | 17.3% |
Black Brazilians
Blacks constitute the third largest ethnic group of Brazil with around 14,5 million citizens or 7,6 % of the population. These are people who have origins in any of the black populations of Africa. In the country, these are generally used for Brazilians with at least partial Sub-Saharan African ancestry. Most African Brazilians are the direct descendants of captive Africans who survived the slavery era within the boundaries of the present Brazil, but also with considerable European and Amerindian ancestry. Afro-Brazilians might not directly be compared to Pardo-Brazilians. The number of African genes is substantially higher in Afro-Brazilians, therefore their skin colour is darker compared to mixed-race Brazilians. Brazil, followed by the United States, has the largest African diaspora in the Americas.Today most Blacks are either Catholic or Evangelical. Smaller groups are Irreligious including Atheists and a number of African tradition sects can be found especially in Bahia, notably Candomblé and Umbanda. The latter being a syncretism of Roman Catholicism, African traditions, Spiritism and Indigenous beliefs. A minority of Blacks follows Kardecism, which is a blend of Christianism and Spiritualism founded in France.
Most Blacks can be found in Bahia and Maranhão states after the colonial period influx, as well as in the northern region of Minas Gerais thanks to the Diamond and Gold Rush period and parts of Rio de Janeiro due to slavery in the former royal court after its transfer.
| Region | Percentage |
| North Brazil | 6.2% |
| Northeast Brazil | 8.1% |
| Central-West Brazil | 5.7% |
| Southeast Brazil | 7.91% |
| Southern Brazil | 3.6% |
Asian Brazilians
Asians, in common parlance referred to East Asians, constitute the fourth largest ethnic group of Brazil with 2.2 million people, what may not include mixed East Asians. The largest East Asian ethnic group in the country are the Japanese.Brazil has the largest population of Japanese people outside Japan, being in percentage or absolute numbers. The number of Japanese Brazilians revolves around 1.8 million descendants and the Japanese community also comprises 57 thousand Japanese nationals. According to Ethnologue over 400 thousand people speak Japanese in Brazil.
The others are mainly Chinese, Taiwanese and South Korean. Due to the recent immigration of Chinese citizens to Brazil the number of these people is constantly on the rise.
South Asians also left descendants in Brazil, mostly East Indians, Vietnamese, Indonesians and Bengali. However, there is a current stronger influx of Bengalis nowadays, most of them refugees. Moreover, South Asians might not be included into the category of people with "yellow" skin colour, as they are physically different from Eastern Asian populations and therefore more likely to fit into the Pardo category.
There are large groups of East Asian Catholics as well as non-religious Asians. Buddhism in Brazil is also very common among non-Asians, especially Whites, with Japanese Buddhism being among the most usual and oldest forms. Shinto practices involving life style and funerals are very common in Nipponese families of São Paulo and Paraná states. Shinto-derived Japanese New Religions are very popular throughout the nation. The largest Nipponese new religions are Seicho-no-Ie, Tenrikyo, Perfect Liberty Kyodan and Church of World Messianity. Korean Confucianism and Chinese Confucianism are especially found in São Paulo capital.
| Region | Percentage |
| North Brazil | 0.5 - 1% |
| Northeast Brazil | 0.3 - 0.5% |
| Central-West Brazil | 0.7 - 0.8% |
| Southeast Brazil | 1.1% |
| Southern Brazil | 0.5 - 0.7% |
Indigenous people
Indigenous people constitute the fifth largest ethnic group of Brazil, with around 800,000 individuals. It is the oldest ethnic group in the country, mainly located in the surroundings of the Amazon basin inside the Amazon Forest but also in various reservations throughout the five geographical regions. Compared to the total population of the country the number might seem small, but millions of Brazilians actually have some Indigenous ancestry. This happened mainly because of the miscegenation of indigenous tribes with colonial settlers.Around 180 Native or autoctone languages are spoken in Brazil by 160 thousand people, many of them have threatened status. Most Natives can communicate in Portuguese and tribes in reservations have their mother tongue and Portuguese taught at schools. Today 517 thousand people live in Indigenous reservations.
Genetic studies
Genetic studies have shown the Brazilian population as a whole to have European, African and Native Americans components.Autosomal studies
A 2015 autosomal genetic study, which also analysed data of 25 studies of 38 different Brazilian populations concluded that: European ancestry accounts for 62% of the heritage of the population, followed by the African and the Native American. The European contribution is highest in Southern Brazil, the African highest in Northeast Brazil and the Native American is the highest in Northern Brazil.| Region | European | African | Native American |
| North Region | 51% | 16% | 32% |
| Northeast Region | 58% | 27% | 15% |
| Central-West Region | 64% | 24% | 12% |
| Southeast Region | 67% | 23% | 10% |
| South Region | 77% | 12% | 11% |
An autosomal study from 2013, with nearly 1300 samples from all of the Brazilian regions, found a pred. degree of European ancestry combined with African and Native American contributions, in varying degrees. 'Following an increasing North to South gradient, European ancestry was the most prevalent in all urban populations. The populations in the North consisted of a significant proportion of Native American ancestry that was about two times higher than the African contribution. Conversely, in the Northeast, Center-West and Southeast, African ancestry was the second most prevalent. At an intrapopulation level, all urban
populations were highly admixed, and most of the variation in ancestry proportions was observed between individuals within each population rather than among population'.
| Region | European | African | Native American |
| North Region | 51% | 17% | 32% |
| Northeast Region | 56% | 28% | 16% |
| Central-West Region | 58% | 26% | 16% |
| Southeast Region | 61% | 27% | 12% |
| South Region | 74% | 15% | 11% |
An autosomal DNA study, with nearly 1000 samples from every major race group all over the country found out a major European contribution, followed by a high African contribution and an important Native American component. "In all regions studied, the European ancestry was predominant, with proportions ranging from 60.6% in the Northeast to 77.7% in the South". The 2011 autosomal study samples came from blood donors, and also public health institutions personnel and health students.
| Region | European | African | Native American |
| Northern Brazil | 68.80% | 10.50% | 18.50% |
| Northeast Brazil | 60.10% | 29.30% | 8.90% |
| Southeast Brazil | 74.20% | 17.30% | 7.30% |
| Southern Brazil | 79.50% | 10.30% | 9.40% |
According to an autosomal DNA study from 2010, "a new portrayal of each ethnicity contribution to the DNA of Brazilians, obtained with samples from the five regions of the country, has indicated that, on average, European ancestors are responsible for nearly 80% of the genetic heritage of the population. The variation between the regions is small, with the possible exception of the South, where the European contribution reaches nearly 90%. The results, published by the scientific magazine American Journal of Human Biology by a team of the Catholic University of Brasília, show that, in Brazil, physical indicators such as skin colour, colour of the eyes and colour of the hair have little to do with the genetic ancestry of each person, which has been shown in previous studies. "Ancestry informative SNPs can be useful to estimate individual and population biogeographical ancestry. Brazilian population is characterized by a genetic background of three parental populations with a wide degree and diverse patterns of admixture. In this work we analyzed the information content of 28 ancestry-informative SNPs into multiplexed panels using three parental population sources to infer the genetic admixture in an urban sample of the five Brazilian geopolitical regions. The SNPs assigned apart the parental populations from each other and thus can be applied for ancestry estimation in a three hybrid admixed population. Data was used to infer genetic ancestry in Brazilians with an admixture model. Pairwise estimates of F among the five Brazilian geopolitical regions suggested little genetic differentiation only between the South and the remaining regions. Estimates of ancestry results are consistent with the heterogeneous genetic profile of Brazilian population, with a major contribution of European ancestry followed by African and Amerindian contributions. The described multiplexed SNP panels can be useful tool for bioanthropological studies but it can be mainly valuable to control for spurious results in genetic association studies in admixed populations". It is important to note that "the samples came from free of charge paternity test takers, thus as the researchers made it explicit: "the paternity tests were free of charge, the population samples involved people of variable socioeconomic strata, although likely to be leaning slightly
towards the ‘‘pardo’’ group".
| Region | European | African | Native American |
| North Region | 71.10% | 18.20% | 10.70% |
| Northeast Region | 77.40% | 13.60% | 8.90% |
| Central-West Region | 65.90% | 18.70% | 11.80% |
| Southeast Region | 79.90% | 14.10% | 6.10% |
| South Region | 87.70% | 7.70% | 5.20% |
An autosomal DNA study from 2009 found a similar profile "all the Brazilian samples lie more closely to the European group than to the African populations or to the Mestizos from Mexico".
| Region | European | African | Native American |
| North Region | 60.6% | 21.3% | 18.1% |
| Northeast Region | 66.7% | 23.3% | 10.0% |
| Central-West Region | 66.3% | 21.7% | 12.0% |
| Southeast Region | 60.7% | 32.0% | 7.3% |
| South Region | 81.5% | 9.3% | 9.2% |
According to another autosomal DNA study from 2008, by the University of Brasília, European ancestry dominates in the whole of Brazil, accounting for 65.90% of ancestry of the population, followed by the African contribution and the Native American.
A more recent study, from 2013, found the following composition in São Paulo state: 61,9% European, 25,5% African and 11,6% Native American.
A 2014 autosomal DNA study, which analysed data from 1594 samples from all of the Brazilian regions, found that Brazilians show widespread European ancestry with the highest levels being observed in the south. African ancestry is also widespread and reaches its highest values in the East of the country. Native American ancestry is highest in the north-west. In conclusion, European ancestry accounts for 82% of the heritage of the population, followed by the African and the Native American.
MtDna and y DNA studies
Haplogroup frequencies do not determine phenotype nor admixture. They are very general genetic snapshots, primarily useful in examining past population group migratory patterns. Only autosomal DNA testing can reveal admixture structures, since it analyses millions of alleles from both maternal and paternal sides. Contrary to yDNA or mtDNA, which are focused on one single lineage the autosomal DNA studies profile the whole ancestry of a given individual, being more accurate in describing the complex patterns of ancestry in a given place. According to a genetic study in 2000 who analysed 247 samples who came from four of the five major geographic regions of the country, the mtDNA pool of present-day Brazilians clearly reflects the imprints of the early Portuguese colonization process, as well as the recent immigrant waves of the last century.| Continental Fraction | Brazil | Northern | Northeastern | Southeastern | Southern |
| Native American | 33% | 54% | 22% | 33% | 22% |
| African | 28% | 15% | 44% | 34% | 12% |
| European | 39% | 31% | 34% | 31% | 66% |
According to a study in 2001, the vast majority of Y chromosomes in white Brazilian males, regardless of their regional source, is of European origin, with a very low frequency of sub-Saharan African chromosomes and a complete absence of Amerindian contributions. These results configure a picture of strong directional mating in Brazil involving European males, on one side, and European, African and Amerindian females, on the other.
In a study from 2016, the authors investigated a set of 41 Y-SNPs in 1217 unrelated males from the five Brazilian geopolitical regions. A total of 22 different haplogroups were detected in the whole Brazilian sample, revealing the three major continental origins of the current population, namely from America, Europe and Africa. The genetic differences observed among regions were, however, consistent with the colonization history of the country. The sample from the Northern region presented the highest Native American ancestry, whereas the more pronounced African contribution could be observed in the Northeastern population. The Central-Western and Southern samples showed the higher European contributions. The Southeastern region presented significant European and African contributions. Portugal was estimated to be the main source of the male European lineages to Central-West, Southeast and South Brazil. The North and the Northeast showed the highest contribution from France and Italy, respectively. The highest migration rate from Lebanon was to the Central-Weast, whereas a significant migration from Germany was observed to the Central East, Southeast and South.
In the Brazilian "white" and "pardos" the autosomal ancestry tends to be in most cases predominantly European, with often a non European mtDNA, which is explained by the women marrying newly arrived colonists, during the formation of the Brazilian people.