The effects of community violence on on-time grade progression in Rio de Janeiro

• In Event: 1-014 - Indirect Effects of Violence On Human Development: Lessons from Diverse Latin American Samples

Integrative Statement

Urban violence is a widespread phenomenon that disproportionately affects Latin America, where 43 of the 50 metropoles with the highest murder rates are located (Igarapé, 2015). One city in the region, Rio de Janeiro, has recently experienced an uptick in violent crime in the wake of political and financial instability. Approximately 80-percent of the city’s residents believe they are at risk of being murdered within the next twelve months (Datafolha, 2015) and violence often disrupts school activities. During the first semester of the 2017 academic year, 28-percent of the city’s public schools were closed at least one day due to gunfights and during only 6-percent of school days were all schools in the city open (Nova Escola, 2017).
Much research illustrates the negative consequences of violence on a host of outcomes for children living in communities with high crime rates (McCoy, 2013) and for those attending schools close to gunfights (Monteiro and Rocha, 2016). Yet, relatively little is known about whether school-level features may serve to exacerbate or mitigate the consequences of violence for children. In the latter case, certain schools may serve as protective factors to buffer violence’s adverse effects if they offer students, for example, a well-regulated and supportive community (Farrington, 2007).
To address this knowledge gap, this study estimates the effects of school neighborhood violence on children’s on-time grade progression and quantifies the variation in the consequences of violence attributable to several school-level characteristics. On-time grade progression, whether a child successfully proceeds to the following grade or is retained, is an important measure of academic success. The study relies on administrative data from 2007 to 2016 on Rio’s municipal elementary schools and on community violence. The dataset includes information on 5.3 million children nested in 49,961 school-year-grade observations. First, following the approach of Burdick-Will (2013) and others, we exploit variation in year-to-year violence levels of the communities surrounding schools to estimate the effects of violence on grade progression for cohorts of children enrolled in first through ninth grades. Preliminary results suggest that a standard deviation increase in the community crime rate is associated with a 0.4-percent decrease in grade progression (.035 SD), with larger coefficients observed for earlier grades (Figure 1). Although violence affects the entire city, its slums are subject to much higher homicide rates. Thus, we replicate our analysis focusing only on the subset of schools located within or close to slums (i.e., within 200 meters) with a more granular dataset of violent crime.
Second, to investigate whether school-level factors account for variation in the consequences of community violence on grade progression we incorporate information on within-school climate and internal security policies, as reported by principal and teacher questionnaires. Specifically, we aim to understand whether certain school policies and programs serve to mitigate the negative impacts of violence on grade progression. Uncovering the school-level features that potentially alleviate the effects of community violence on student outcomes can help inform the development of system- and school-level policies that support student success in light of attenuating situations.

Authors

• Diana Goldemberg, Fundação Getúlio Vargas
  Presenting Author

• Emily Hanno, Harvard University
  Non-Presenting Author