Local Violence and Educational Attainment

Violence in and around schools has drawn increasing attention lately from both the public and policymakers. Despite the importance of the problem, however, research on this topic has been limited. In this paper I analyze how local violence affects high school graduation and college attendance. Using data from the High School and Beyond survey, I find that local violence has important effects. Moderate levels of violence reduce the likelihood of high school graduation by 5.1 percentage points on average, and lower the likelihood that a student will attend college by 6.9 percentage points.