Dois ensaios sobre a qualidade da educação e sua relação com o Bolsa Família e gastos educacionais no Brasil

Abstract

The aim of this study is to examine the factors that influence the quality of basic education in Brazil, with emphasis on public spending for education and income transfer program named Bolsa Família (BF). The analysis on the quality of basic education in Brazil becomes relevant due to the historical economic and social disparities in Brazil, and to the importance of human capital for growth and development of the country.. As a result of the recent increase in enrollment due to the BF, this process should be followed by improvements in quality of education. Students can increase their human capital and contribute to the economic and social development to take their families out of poverty in a sustainable manner with a good quality education. Thus, this study is composed of two empirical works that examine whether the features of BF and public spending on education for the municipalities are being accompanied by improvements in the quality of basic education in Brazil. The hypotheses to be tested in these works are: 1) municipalities with high resources allocated by the BF are followed by lower scores in Prova Brasil (PB); 2) municipalities characterized by higher proficiencies in PB should receive more government spending on basic education; 3) public spending on education and the program BF, respectively, show a positive and a negative correlation with the quality of education in public schools, and 4) the results can be changed by examining specific effects of schools instead of specific effects of municipalities. The quality of education is measured by proficiency in Mathematics and Portuguese for 4th grade and 8th grade. This analysis uses a panel data with educational variables, and macroeconomic and social policies of the municipalities. The first test considers the first two hypotheses, and the municipalities as the unit of analysis. The second test considers the last two hypotheses, and uses the Brazilian public schools as the unit of analysis. The results for BF either corroborate the hypotheses tested or sometimes contradict these hypotheses. In accordance with the tested hypotheses, the BF program presents a negative relationship with Portuguese 4th grade and Math 8th grade, and it is even more significant when examining specific effects of schools. However, the results also show a positive relationship between the BF program and Math 4th grade and 8th grade Portuguese proficiencies, contradicting the hypothesis above. The results for spending on basic education, in accordance with the tested hypotheses, show that schools located in counties that receive greater investments in education have higher average proficiency for Math 4th grade, 4th grade Portuguese and Portuguese 8th grade. However, the coefficients of both BF and educational expenses have a very small magnitude. These results show that there is need for coordination between public administration and different social policies in Brazil so that public investments become more efficient and generate benefits for the population.