Violent Peers at School: Impacts and Mechanisms

This paper examines the impact of classroom exposure to peers with a history of violent behavior on academic achievement and the underlying mechanisms. This measure of peer violence departs significantly from earlier studies that measured potential peer violence based on the background characteristics of students. We exploit idiosyncratic treatment variations during the transition from primary to middle school for causal identification. We find that a higher proportion of violent peers negatively affects cognitive performance in tests in various subjects, particularly pronounced in mathematics and English, compared to Hebrew and science. These effects are more pronounced in girls than in boys. While boys’ performance is negatively influenced only by the presence of violent male peers, girls are adversely affected by both violent male and female peers. As for mechanisms, violent peers disrupt learning environments and lower teachers’ productivity, reflected in lower job satisfaction and perception of higher workloads. Violent peers also significantly increase the likelihood of other students engaging in physical fights, and reduce their homework time, especially for girls and students from low SES.