School Shootings and Student Performance

Poutvaara, Panu; Ropponen, Olli Tapani

doi:10.2139/ssrn.1631144

Download This Paper

Open PDF in Browser

Add Paper to My Library

School Shootings and Student Performance

IZA Discussion Paper No. 5009

23 Pages Posted: 29 Jun 2010

See all articles by Panu Poutvaara

Panu Poutvaara

University of Helsinki - Department of Economics; Helsinki Center of Economic Research (HECER); CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute); IZA Institute of Labor Economics

Olli Tapani Ropponen

Government of the Republic of Finland - VATT Institute for Economic Research; University of Helsinki - Department of Political and Economic Studies

There are 2 versions of this paper

Abstract

In this paper, we study how high school students reacted to the shocking news of a school shooting. The shooting coincided with national high-school matriculation exams. As there were exams both before and after the shooting, we can perform a difference-in-differences analysis to uncover how the school shooting affected the test scores compared to previous years. We find that the average score of young men declined due to the school shooting, whereas we do not observe a similar pattern for women.

Keywords: school shootings, school performance, shocking news, gender differences, treatment effect models

JEL Classification: C21, J16, I19

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Poutvaara, Panu and Ropponen, Olli Tapani, School Shootings and Student Performance. IZA Discussion Paper No. 5009, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1631144 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1631144