Avaliação de impacto do programa Cartão Mais Infância Ceará sobre a performance escolarance

Abstract

The primary objective of this paper is to evaluate the impact of the Cartão Mais Infância Ceará (CMIC) program on students’ school performance in the Portuguese and Mathematics exams of the Permanent Assessment System for Basic Education in Ceará (SPAECE). The analysis focuses on students from families benefiting from the program between the years 2018 and 2019. The method employed is the difference-in-differences model, coupled with the propensity score approach following the design proposed by Blundell and Dias (2009), which is suitable for repeated cross-sections data structures. The findings reveal that being part of a CMIC family is, on average, associated with a performance improvement of approximately 11.63% and 11.52% in the SPAECE Portuguese and Mathematics exams, respectively, compared to students from non-participating families.