Exposure to drug trafficking and school truancy: Empirical evidence from Costa Rica

Exposure to crime and violence associated with drug trafficking has been shown to have negative consequences on students’ health, peer relationships, and educational outcomes. However, little attention has been devoted to analyzing the effects of exposure to drug trafficking on students’ truancy behavior, a critical outcome with a high cost at an individual and societal level. This study investigates the connection between exposure to drug trafficking (an increasingly common form of chronic crime and subsequent violence in Latin America) and school truancy in Costa Rica. To do so, we use a unique and comprehensive microdata set that merges detailed information on a specific measure of exposure to drug trafficking (cocaine seizures) and socioeconomic characteristics of Costa Rican districts with student and school data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). In total, we obtain a sample of 4,584 students in secondary education attending 195 schools in 147 districts. Using logistic regression, we find that students in districts with higher exposure to drug trafficking (measured by cocaine seizure rate) are more prone to school truancy. This finding suggests that strategies to tackle school truancy should consider a neighborhood context perspective.