Drug Battles and School Achievement: Evidence from Rio de Janeiro's Favelas

Abstract

Abstract This paper examines the effects of gunfights 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. Within-school estimates indicate that students' scores are lower in math in years in which they are exposed to drug battles. The effect increases with conflict intensity, duration, and proximity to exam dates and decreases with the distance between the school and the conflict location. School supply is an important mechanism. Gunfights are associated with higher teacher absenteeism, principal turnover, and temporary school closings.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 142 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.