THE EFFECTS OF EXPOSURE TO COMMUNITY GUN-VIOLENCE ON THE HIGH SCHOOL DROPOUT RATES OF CALIFORNIA PUBLIC SCHOOL STUDENTS

PWP-CCPR-2018-005

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 that: (1) Gun-violence exposure rates are significantly related to mean dropout rates for Blacks and Hispanics, and are unrelated to mean dropout rates for Whites and Asians. (2) Gun-violence exposure effects on high school completion are not primarily mediated by learning losses (less than 25 percent of the effect), which suggests that gun-violence exposure related dropouts generally have the cognitive capability to excel beyond their realized levels of educational attainment. (3) Gun-violence exposure affects everyone. Blacks and Hispanics are most affected through elevated dropout rates. Exposure effects for Whites tend to manifest by way of higher intragroup variance in dropout rates. Both Whites and Asians are affected by lower levels of reading and math proficiency among high school graduates. (4) Estimates suggest that the Black-White (Hispanic-White) difference in gun-violence exposure levels is associated with 16 (19) percent of the Black-White (Hispanic-White) difference in California dropout rates over the last decade. Findings in this chapter provide clear evidence that negative effects of gun-violence have played a significant role in shaping state-level demographics.