Differential Effects of Gun-Violence Exposure on High School Dropout Rates: Evidence from California Public Schools

• In Event: 3429 - Section on Sociology of Education Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 27. School Discipline and Violence

Abstract

I constructed a unique set of data from over 300 California law enforcement agencies, in conjunction with large-scale education microdata covering the high school outcomes of over 3.8 million California ninth-graders from the classes of 2003 to 2014 to examine the extent to which estimated effects of violence exposure, coupled with significant differences in violence exposure rates, contribute to population-level differences in educational attainment. I find evidence supporting several important results. [1] High school dropout rates significantly respond to gun violence only if exposure exceeds a certain threshold. [2] I find significant effects of gun-violence exposure on the dropout rates of black and Hispanic students, and no significant effects for white and Asian students. [3] Estimates suggest that roughly 18% (20%) of the black-white (Hispanic-white) dropout differential is associated with gun-violence exposure differences. The magnitude of the effects is associated with over 40,000 dropouts over the eleven graduating classes in the observation window.

Author

• Ravaris LaDale Moore, Loyola Marymount University