Growing up inside the invisible frontier : the effect of gang’s territorial control on youth’s human capital accumulation

CRIS SCIENTIFIC SEMINAR 2024-2025

Talk by Arantxa Rodríguez-Uribe

Research & Policy Manager, J-PAL Europe / Paris School of Economics

How does the enforcement of gang’s territorial borders affects children’s and youth’s human capital accumulation? 

I explore this question in Medellin, Colombia. To be able to observe binding gang borders, I focus on a city-wide gang turf that happened during 2009-2012. I map the borders of one of the competing factions and perform a spatial regression discontinuity using geolocated individual level data on educational enrollment. 

I find that the probability of dropping out of schooling before finishing high school is 8 p.p higher for male students 13 years old or older attending public schools living inside the gang border than for same age male students attending public schools living only 100m outside of it. I do not find significant effects on females or younger males. Similarly, this discontinuity did not exist for males students 13 year old or older before the frontier became binding for the broader community.

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