Working Paper: NBER ID: w30936
Authors: Andrew Bibler; Stephen B. Billings; Stephen Ross
Abstract: School choice lotteries are an important tool for allocating access to high-quality and oversubscribed public schools. While prior evidence suggests that winning a school lottery decreases adult criminality, there is little evidence for how school choice lotteries impact non-lottery students who are left behind at their neighborhood school. We leverage variation in actual lottery winners conditional on expected lottery winners to link the displacement of middle school peers to adult criminal outcomes. We find that non-applicant boys are more likely to be arrested as adults when applicants from their neighborhood win the school choice lottery. These effects are concentrated among boys who are at low risk of being arrested based on observables. Finally, we confirm evidence in the literature that students who win the lottery decrease adult criminality but show that after accounting for the negative impact on the students who forego the lottery, lotteries increase overall arrests and days incarcerated for young men.
Keywords: school choice; crime; lottery; peer effects
JEL Codes: I24; I26; K42; R29
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Lottery Winners (H27) | Non-Applicant Boys' Arrests (K40) |
| Winning Lottery (H27) | Criminality for Lottery Winners (H27) |
| Winning Lottery (H27) | Non-Applicant Arrests (K42) |
| Change in Lottery Winners (H27) | Non-Applicant Boys' Arrests (K40) |
| Change in Lottery Winners (H27) | Probability of Arrest for Low-Risk Students (K40) |
| Change in Lottery Winners (H27) | Violent Arrests for Low-Risk Students (K40) |
| Change in Lottery Winners (H27) | Days Incarcerated for Low-Risk Students (I21) |
| Lottery Application Process (H27) | Total Arrests (K42) |
| Lottery Application Process (H27) | Days Incarcerated (Y10) |