Religião e Educação: Uma Análise do Desempenho dos Estudantes no Exame Nacional do Ensino Médio

This study aims to evaluate the effect of Protestant religion on academic performance. To this end, it was considered the precedent of Max Weber and the literature that points out the importance of education in the movement led by Martin Luther. Thus, it was decided to work with the comparison between the Protestant and Catholic confessions. In order to achieve the proposed objective, microdata from the 2009 edition of the National High School Exam (Enem) were used. The empirical strategy followed a quasi-experimental approach, using the estimator of ordinary least squares weighted by weights generated with the entropy balancing technique. The results found indicate that Protestant or evangelical candidates performed better in the tests of human sciences; natural sciences; languages and writing. On the other hand, Catholics performed better in the math test, thus corroborating other studies conducted to Brazil.