The Hidden Costs and Lasting Legacies of Violence on Education: Evidence from Colombia

Valentina Duque, Columbia University

This paper uses the massive escalation of violence and terrorism in Colombia as a natural experiment to examine the medium and long term effects of early exposures to violence on educational attainment. Exposure to violence is measured using homicide rates and merged to Census data using the municipality and year of birth for each individual. Results indicate that high levels of violence experienced around birth significantly reduce the likelihood of school attendance for children, and exposure around childhood has a significant and negative impact on the years of education for young adults. These findings do not seem to be driven by exposure to violence at other stages in life (late childhood, adolescence, etc.), selection bias on survival, fertility, mobility, or any other time varying factors at the regional level. The effects found in this study can be interpreted as conservative estimates of the causal effect of violence on future education.