| dc.description.abstract | This dissertation investigates the determinants of cognitive proficiency of students in their final year of high school in the metropolitan area of Belo Horizonte, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Salvador, Recife and Porto Alegre. Furthermore, it investigates the importance of cognitive proficiency as a determinant of occupational status of young people after completion of basic education. The primary method used to estimate the educational production function, based on the ENEM and School Census databases of 2008, was ordinary least squares. The presence of self-selection bias in the sample and the bias of non i.i.d. samples were fixed with, respectively, the method of two stage of Heckman (1979) and the method of hierarchical linear models. The imputation of ENEM scores in PME was based on the methodology of poverty maps creation. After the imputation of the cognitive proficiency variable, we used the multinomial logit model to estimate the probability of transition between occupational status, with cognitive proficiency as a determinant, using the PME from 2008 to 2010. As a result of the main determinants of the ENEM score in 2008, we can point family income and educational level of student's mother as the most important. In addition, black students have lower grades than white or asian students, women have lower performance than men in the objective test, but perform better in writing. Considering regional differences, the metropolitan area of Belo Horizonte has an average score higher than all others. The result of the probabilistic model for the occupation of young people showed that there is not much difference between sexes, but the cognitive proficiency increases the probability of an individual to continue studying in higher education. | |
