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Abstract
Many studies in the economic field have showed the importan-ce of education to increase the wellbeing of the society. Trying to improve
the educational indicators, in the 90’s, many changes were implemented
in the Brazilian public school system. The objective of the present study
is to evaluate school infrastructure and family characteristics affecting
children’s decision to study or to drop out from school (frequency and
school delay in primary and secondary levels), comparing the urban and
rural areas of Pernambuco and São Paulo. The results showed that poli-cies that would increase parents’ schooling and/or family income would
increase frequency and decrease delay in school. However, policies that
would improve the schools’ infrastructure and consequently the quality
of the schools would have to take the socio-economic aspects of the region
into consideration as well as the type of objective to be reached. Moreo-ver, the investments should be focused on rural areas where educational
indicators are far behind.