We examine how shootings at schools—an increasingly common form of gun violence in the United States—impact the educational and economic trajectories of students. Using linked schooling and labor market data in Texas from 1992 to 2018, we compare within-student and across-cohort changes in outcomes following a shooting to those experienced by students at matched control schools. We find that school shootings increase absenteeism and grade repetition; reduce high school graduation, college enrollment, and college completion; and reduce employment and earnings at ages 24–26. We further find school-level increases in the number of leadership staff and reductions in retention among teachers and teaching support staff in the years following a shooting. The adverse impacts of shootings span student characteristics, suggesting that the economic costs of school shootings are universal.
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Probable Cause, Ep. 69: Molly Schnell
In this episode, we discuss Prof. Schnell’s work on how exposure to school shootings affects students’ outcomes:
“Trauma at School: The Impacts of Shootings on Students’ Human Capital and Economic Outcomes” by Marika Cabral, Bokyung Kim, Maya Rossin-Slater, Molly Schnell, and Hannes Schwandt
The consequences of high-fatality school shootings for surviving students
This paper examines the impact of high-fatality school shootings on the subsequent outcomes of the survivors of those events. We focus specifically on the shootings at Columbine High School (Littleton, CO), Sandy Hook Elementary (Newtown, CT), and Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School (Parkland, FL). We assess the subsequent educational record, including attendance and test scores, and the long-term health consequences of surviving students. In all analyses, we treat the timing and location of these events as random, enabling us to identify causal effects. Our results indicate that these high-fatality school shootings led to substantial reductions in attendance and test scores. These educational effects appear to be larger than the effects of shootings with fewer fatalities estimated by others. Children who survived the Columbine shooting were more likely to die by age 30, particularly among boys. They experienced higher levels of suicide and accidental poisonings (overdoses).
The impact of mass shootings on gun policy
There have been dozens of high-profile mass shootings in recent decades. This paper presents three main findings about the impact of mass shootings on gun policy. First, mass shootings evoke large policy responses. A single mass shooting leads to a 15% increase in the number of firearm bills introduced within a state in the year after a mass shooting. This effect increases with the extent of media coverage. Second, mass shootings account for a small portion of all gun deaths, but have an outsized influence relative to other homicides. Third, when looking at bills that were actually enacted into law, the impact of mass shootings depends on the party in power. The annual number of laws that loosen gun restrictions doubles in the year following a mass shooting in states with Republican-controlled legislatures. We find no significant effect of mass shootings on laws enacted when there is a Democrat-controlled legislature, nor do we find a significant effect of mass shootings on the enactment of laws that tighten gun restrictions.
School Shootings in US Reach Highest Recorded Levels
School shootings in the US surged over the past 25 years and mass shootings that occurred at kindergarten through 12th-grade school sites became more deadly, according to a study in Pediatrics.