Abstract
In this paper, we combine extremely granular information on the location and timing of homicides with a number of large administrative educational datasets from Brazil, to estimate the effect of exposure to homicides around schools, students' residence, and on their way to school. We show that violence has a detrimental effect on school attendance, on standardised test scores and increases dropout rates of students substantially. We use exceptionally rich information from student- and parent-background questionnaires to investigate the effect of violence on the aspirations and attitudes towards education. We nd that boys systematically report lower educational aspiration towards education.
