Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP17322
Authors: Marco Alfano; Joseph Simon Goerlach
Abstract: We examine how terrorism alters the demand for education through perceived risks and returns by relating terrorist attacks to media signal coverage and schooling in Kenya. Exploiting geographical and temporal variation in wireless signal coverage and attacks, we establish that media access reinforces negative effects of terrorism on schooling. These effects are confirmed when we instrument both media signal and the incidence of attacks. For households with media access, we also find a significant relation between media content and schooling and a significant effect of attacks on self-reported fears and concerns. Based on these insights, we estimate a simple structural model where heterogeneous households experiencing terrorism form beliefs about risks and returns to education. We exploit the same quasi-experimental variation as in the reduced form analysis to identify how media change subjective expectations. The results show that households with media access significantly over-estimate fatality risks.
Keywords: terrorism; media; expectations; education
JEL Codes: D74; L82; F52; I21
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| terrorist attacks (H84) | school enrolment (I21) |
| terrorist attacks (H84) | school enrolment (with media access) (I24) |
| media access (L82) | negative impact of terrorism on schooling (I24) |
| media access (L82) | expectations regarding risks and returns to education (I26) |
| media access (L82) | perceptions of fatality risks associated with terrorism (H12) |
| media access (L82) | educational impact of terrorism (I24) |
| media coverage (L82) | estimated loss in adult lifetime earnings due to terrorism's negative effect on schooling (J17) |