The Aspiration-Attainment Gap and the Role of Race in School Gun Violence

• In Event: 4347 - Exploring Crime, Law and Deviance

Abstract

This study considers the impact of race on gun violence in schools by annotating race in a recently curated large N data and analyzing its impact (Pah et. al 2017). We leverage educational theories about a cooling-out-process and the school-to-work transition to quantitatively describe an aspi-ration-attainment gap with unequal implications for African-American postsecondary students. We find that increases in school shootings significantly vary by race over two key change points. Specifically, we find that the increase in school shootings in the 1990s were primarily driven by white shooters at the K-12 level, while a more recent rise in school shootings in the 2000s was driven by African-American shooters at the postsecondary level. We propose that the recent rise in college shootings was the product of a heightened racial gap between aspirations and attainments associated with the Great Recession.

Authors

• Kat Albrecht, Northwestern University

• Adam Pah, Northwestern University

• John Hagan, Northwestern University

• Luis Amaral, Northwestern University