Drug Battles and School Achievement: Evidence from Rio de Janeiro's Favelas Joana Monteiro and Rudi Rocha∗ July 2013 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 territo- ries. Within-school estimates indicate that students from schools exposed to violence score less in math exams. Our findings suggest that the effect of vio- lence increases with conflict intensity, duration, and proximity to exam dates; and decreases with the distance between the school and the conflict location. Finally, we find that school supply is an important mechanism driving the achievement results; armed conflicts are associated with higher teacher absen- teeism, principal turnover, and temporary school closings. JEL: I25, K42, O12 Key words: slum, violence, drug gangs, student achievement. ∗Monteiro: Brazilian Institute of Economics, Get´ulioVargas Foundation (IBRE/FGV), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (
[email protected]). Rocha: Institute of Economics, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (IE/UFRJ), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (
[email protected]). We thank Filipe Campante, Ign´acioCano, Melissa Dell, Claudio Ferraz, S´ergioFerreira, Asim Khwaja, Horacio Larreguy, Joana Naritomi, Rohini Pande, Dan Posner, Heather Schofield, Rodrigo Soares, David Yanagizawa-Drott and seminar participants at the 2012 NEUDC, MIT Political Economy Breakfast, the 33rd Meeting of the Brazilian Econometric Society, the 1st Meeting of AL CAPONE-Lacea, PUC-Rio, and Harvard Development Lunch for helpful comments. We are extremely grateful to Paulo Ferraz for his support over the project and Disque-Den´unciafor providing access to data.