A note on performance differences between urban and rural schools in Brazil

Abstract This note analyzes which factors contribute to the performance differential of students attending schools in rural and urban areas in Brazil. Our results show that, in both subjects (Math and Portuguese), students from schools located in urban areas perform better than students from rural area schools. The decomposition exercise shows that the characteristic-effect explain more the urban-rural differential than the return-effect (or structural-effect). Also, the characteristics of the school attended by the students are the major drivers of the difference in grades mainly in the upper quantiles and especially in Math.