Violence and Children’s Education: Evidence from Administrative Data

Valentina Duque

No 2019-16, Working Papers from University of Sydney, School of Economics

Abstract: This paper exploits the sharp escalation of violence in Colombia in the 1980s associated with the emergence of drug cartels to provide novel evidence on the long-run effects of violence exposure throughout the life-course, on children’s educational attainment and academic achievement, using administrative data. I find that, a higher homicide rate in early-childhood is associated with a higher probability of school dropout and conditional on completing high school, lower scores on a national end-of-high school exam. Results are robust to several falsification tests, analyses of potential sources of selection bias, and to controlling for family fixed effects. I provide suggestive evidence that changes in fetal, child, and adolescent health outcomes are important potential mechanisms.

Keywords: Education; Human capital formation; Early-life shocks; Violence; Parental investments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-his and nep-lam
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:syd:wpaper:2019-16

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