Crime at your doorstep: Gender-specific effects on university student performance

Daniel Montolio () and Pere A. Taberner ()
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Daniel Montolio: Universitat de Barcelona & IEB
Pere A. Taberner: Universitat de Barcelona & IEB & KSNET

No 2025/07, Working Papers from Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB)

Abstract: Student performance at university significantly influences individual decisions and future opportunities, especially in labour markets. This paper analyses the impact of local crime on student performance during higher education, with a focus on potential gender differences. Following students over their bachelor’s years, the identification strategy exploits granular local crime variation – violent and non-violent crimes – near students’ residences before sitting a final exam. We consider both spatial and temporal patterns of crime exposure by estimating a panel data model with student, exam and district-month fixed-effects to provide causal estimates. Our findings suggest that violent crimes have a negative impact on student performance, while non-violent have no significant effect. Notably, the results are mainly driven by high-ability female students, with suggestive evidence that male students in the bottom or middle parts of the grade distribution are also affected.

Keywords: Local violent crime; academic performance; higher education; gender differences (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A22 I23 J16 K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 47 pages
Date: 2025
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-law
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https://ieb.ub.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Doc2025-07_merged.pdf

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