Violence and Human Capital Investments

Martin Foureaux Koppensteiner and Livia Menezes

No 19/03, Discussion Papers in Economics from Division of Economics, School of Business, University of Leicester

Abstract: In this paper, we investigate the effect of exposure to homicides on the educational performance and human capital investments of students in Brazil. We combine extremely granular information on the location and timing of homicides with a number of very large administrative educational datasets, to estimate the effect of exposure to homicides around schools, students' residence, and on their way to school on these outcomes. We show that violence has a detrimental effect on school attendance, on standardised test scores in math and Portuguese language and increases dropout rates of students substantially. The effects are particularly pronounced for boys, indicating important heterogeneous effects of violence. We use exceptionally rich information from student- and parent-background questionnaires to investigate the effect of violence on the aspirations and attitudes towards education. In line with the effects on dropout and the longer-term human capital accumulation of students, we find that boys systematically report lower educational aspiration towards education. Making use of the very rich information from the homicides and education data, we explore a number of underlying transmission channels, including mechanisms related to school supply, bereavement and incentives for human capital investments.

Keywords: Homocides; human capital investments; education; Brazil (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I25 K42 O12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-edu, nep-law and nep-ure
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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Working Paper: Violence and Human Capital Investments (2019)
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