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Crime Exposure and Educational Outcomes in Mexico

Author

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  • Pedro Paulo Orraca Romano

    (Department of Economics, University of Sussex, UK)

Abstract

Driven by drug-trade related crimes, homicide levels in Mexico have dramatically increased since 2007. This study examines the effect of students' exposure to crime on educational outcomes. Using school level data, a panel of Mexico's primary and secondary schools from 2006 to 2012 is constructed to analyse the effect of exposure to local homicides on standardised test scores and grade failure rates. The results show that an increase of one unit in the number of homicides per 10,000 inhabitants reduces average standardised test scores between 0.0035 and 0.0142 standard deviations. This effect is larger in secondary schools, grows stronger if the homicide occurs closer to the examination date, and is relatively stable when using either total homicides or drug-trade related homicides to measure crime exposure. Higher homicides rates are also associated with an increase in the grade failure rate. It is proposed that the negative effects of crime exposure are partly due to a reduction in the number of contact hours, where students do not compensate for this by studying more outside of the school. By having a negative impact on educational outcomes, early exposure to homicides has potential long term consequences since it may affect educational attainment levels and future income streams.

Suggested Citation

  • Pedro Paulo Orraca Romano, 2015. "Crime Exposure and Educational Outcomes in Mexico," Working Paper Series 7715, Department of Economics, University of Sussex Business School.
    • Handle: RePEc:sus:susewp:7715
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    File URL: http://www.sussex.ac.uk/economics/documents/wps-77-2015.pdf
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Brown, Ryan & Velásquez, Andrea, 2017. "The effect of violent crime on the human capital accumulation of young adults," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 127(C), pages 1-12.
    2. Seth Gershenson & Erdal Tekin, 2018. "The Effect of Community Traumatic Events on Student Achievement: Evidence from the Beltway Sniper Attacks," Education Finance and Policy, MIT Press, vol. 13(4), pages 513-544, Fall.
    3. Juan Nelson Martinez Dahbura, 2016. "The Short-Term Impact of Crime on School Enrollment and School Choice: Evidence from El Salvador," Keio-IES Discussion Paper Series 2016-012, Institute for Economics Studies, Keio University.
    4. Sukanya Basu & Sarah Pearlman, 2017. "Violence and migration: evidence from Mexico’s drug war," IZA Journal of Migration and Development, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 7(1), pages 1-29, December.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Crime; Academic performance; Grade failure; Homicide; Mexico;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I25 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Education and Economic Development
    • O12 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
    • O54 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Latin America; Caribbean
    • H49 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Other

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