Does School Choice Leave Behind Future Criminals?

Andrew Bibler, Stephen Billings and Stephen Ross

No 2023-02, Working papers from University of Connecticut, Department of Economics

Abstract: School choice lotteries are an important tool for allocating access to high-quality and oversubscribed public schools. While prior evidence suggests that winning a school lottery decreases adult criminality, there is little evidence for how school choice lotteries impact non-lottery students who are left behind at their neighborhood school. We leverage variation in actual lottery winners conditional on expected lottery winners to link the displacement of middle school peers to adult criminal outcomes. We find that non-applicant boys are more likely to be arrested as adults when applicants from their neighborhood win the school choice lottery. These effects are concentrated among boys who are at low risk of being arrested based on observables. Finally, we confirm evidence in the literature that students who win the lottery decrease adult criminality but show that after accounting for the negative impact on the students who forego the lottery, lotteries increase overall arrests and days incarcerated for young men.

Keywords: School Choice Lotteries; Students Left Behind; Arrest; Crime; Middle School; Neighborhood Effects; Peers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I24 I28 K42 R23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 56 pages
Date: 2023-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-law, nep-ltv and nep-ure
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:uct:uconnp:2023-02

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