Evidence from Rio De Janeiro's Favelas
Drug Battles and School Achievement: Evidence from Rio de Janeiro's Favelas∗ Joana Monteiro Rudi Rocha CID - Harvard University UFRJ October 2012 Abstract This paper examines the effects of armed conflicts between drug gangs in Rio de Janeiro's favelas on student achievement. We explore variation in violence that occurs across time and space when gangs battle over territories. To identify the causal effect of violence on education, we rely on the fact that armed conflicts between drug gangs are triggered by factors often exogenous to local socioeconomic conditions, such as the imprisonment or release of a gang leader, betrayals and revenge. Within-school estimates indicate that students from schools exposed to violence score less in math. The violence effect increases with conflict intensity and duration; decreases with the distance between the school and the conflict location; and increases when the conflict occurs in the months just before the exam. There is no evidence that the effect of vio- lence persists over time. Finally, we find that violence impact on school resources is an important mechanism behind our results. Armed conflicts are significantly associated with higher teacher absenteeism, principal turnover and temporary school shutdown. JEL: D74, O18, I2, K42 Key words: favelas, slum, violence, drug trafficking, student achievement. ∗We thank Filipe Campante, Ign´acioCano, Melissa Dell, Claudio Ferraz, S´ergioFerreira, Asim Khwaja, Horacio Larreguy, Joana Naritomi, Rohini Pande, Dan Posner, Rodrigo Soares and seminar participants at the 33rd Meeting of the Brazilian Econometric Society, the 1st Meeting of AL CAPONE-Lacea, PUC-Rio and Harvard Development Lunch for helpful comments.
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