Religiosidade e desempenho escolar: o caso de jovens brasileiros da região metropolitana de Belo Horizonte

Abstract

The importance of religion in studies of educational achievement has been highlighted by recent research and by many international studies, but it is still a subject relatively unexplored by economists. These surveys show that religious socialization is a process that normally operates apart from individual belief systems and organizational affiliations, and constitutes, even if accidentally, a form of social integration that leads to the strengthening of values, which in turn leads to better educational performance. The main objective of this study is to investigate the impact of religion on educational performance, controlling for individual characteristics, family background and socioeconomic status. The methodology used is that of Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) and Quantile Regression, to verify whether the influence of religion happens in different ways along the distribution of proficiency. In addition, the work do an exploratory non-parametric analysis of the data in order to investigate whether the relationship between religion and scholastic proficiency occurs differently between religions, and what format the Kernel density is for each religion in relation to proficiency. The data analyzed in this study are from the Pesquisa Jovem longitudinal study, conducted by the Center for Development and Regional Planning at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (Cedeplar/ UFMG) between 2007 and 2010 with high school youth in the metropolitan region of Belo Horizonte.