Crime Victims' Children

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.