Impacts of rural pension on school dropout in Brazil

Abstract:

School dropout is still a reality in Brazil, mainly in the countryside. Public policies that may reduce them, even indirectly, are important. This study evaluated the impact of rural pension, a benefit that may spillover in socioeconomic factors, such as school dropout. Through the discontinuity generated by the minimum age to access the rural retirement, regressions model with discontinuity were estimated using microdata from the 2019 Education Module of PNAD (National Household Sample Survey) for a sample of Brazilian rural households and subsamples involving the genders of retirees and young people. The results, which for the full sample are not significant, reveal a negative and significant impact of retirement on the dropout of boys, especially in the presence of male pensioners in the household. This effect is not observed for girls. This evidence suggests pro-male biases possibly generated by expectations related to the gender of the young, in which boys must prepare for the job market while girls contribute to household chores. Even with this bias, it can be suggested the potential reducing effect of the rural pension on school dropout in rural areas, with positive consequences for Brazilian human capital, even though it requires solutions to avoid the increase in gender inequality.

Keywords:
rural pension; school dropout; poverty; education