Crime Victims’ Children

Paul Bingley, Lorenzo Cappellari (), Marco Ovidi and Matteo Sandi
Additional contact information
Paul Bingley: VIVE Copenhagen
Lorenzo Cappellari: Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore
Marco Ovidi: Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore
Matteo Sandi: Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore

No 18855, IZA Discussion Papers from IZA Network @ LISER

Abstract: We provide the first causal evidence on the intergenerational effects of parental criminal victimization originating outside the family. Using population-wide Danish administrative data, we compare end-of-compulsory-school examination scores of children exposed to parental victimization with those of matched controls, and exploit victimizations occurring after compulsory schooling to account for residual selection. Violent, but not property, victimization lowers children’s mathematics scores by 0.03 standard deviations, rising to 0.05 standard deviations for exposure in early childhood, a period when parental inputs are especially consequential for skill formation. Deterioration in family stability, paternal behavior, and labor market attachment following victimization emerge as the primary mechanisms, pointing to an underappreciated channel of intergenerational inequality.

Keywords: parental criminal victimization; intergenerational spillovers; children’s human capital; early childhood (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I24 J13 K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-08
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp18855.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18855

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from IZA Network @ LISER Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Mark Fallak ().