class: center, middle, inverse, title-slide # Neighborhood Intervention, Crime and School Achievement ### Marcelino Guerra ### January, 2022 --- <style type="text/css"> .pull-left2 { float: left; width: 28%; } .pull-right2 { float: right; width: 65%; } .pull-right2 ~ p { clear: both; } </style> <style type="text/css"> .pull-left3 { float: left; width: 58%; } .pull-right2 { float: right; width: 40%; } .pull-right3 ~ p { clear: both; } </style> # Motivation and Background * Cities continue to seek meaningful, evidence-based policies to improve residents' quality of life * Interventions that involve the local community are more likely to strengthen neighborhood bonds, which might impact violence levels (see Sampson, Raudenbush, and Earls (*Science* 1997)) and also help the conservation of the public good * In that sense, there is also an increasing interest in crime prevention through environmental design * For instance, Chalfin et al. (*JQC* 2021) found that increased levels of street lighting led to a substantial reduction in serious crimes that took place outdoors at night in New York City * If changes in the physical environment can both reduce victimization and increase the level of amenities enjoyed by residents, chances are the public policy passes the cost-benefit analysis * If the intervention has other positive impacts on the affected population (such as human capital accumulation), even better * **This study** wants to evaluate an ongoing urban renewal project in a large Brazilian city. Specifically, the project aims to investigate the effects of local amenities on crime and student achievement --- # The Areninhas Project .pull-left[ * In the middle of 2014, The City of Fortaleza began an ongoing urban renewal project called "Areninhas." The intervention consists of synthetic football turf, sometimes with a playground and an outdoor gym. Besides, there is a substantial increase in street lighting * The project targets highly vulnerable communities, and the City Hall aims to offer the population an urban amenity that enhances the well-being of residents, promoting physical activity and a sense of community * The local government works together with residents to supervise and conserve the public equipment. Regularly, free football lessons are offered to the young locals, and amateur football championships are held on weekends ] .pull-right[ As of now, there are **90 areninhas in Fortaleza**, and 152 in the rest of Ceara State  .small[**Source: Fortaleza City Hall website and *O Povo* newspaper.**] ] --- # SPAECE Exam * Since 1992, the State Government of Ceara has been consistently evaluating the performance of students in the public system * The goal is to provide data for the formulation of educational policies and have a real-time picture of the situation in municipal and state schools * Every year, elementary and high school students take the SPAECE exam by late November (the school year starts around February). Usually, the participation rate is above 90%, and students are divided into four proficiency categories: very critical, critical, intermediate, and adequate. That information is compiled and transformed into an educational development index for each school * The SPAECE microdata contains standardized Math and Portuguese test scores and also detailed information about students enrolled in Public schools * Currently, there are around 400,000 students in Fortaleza public school system --- # Potential Mechanisms .pull-left[ ### Urban renewal and crime <br/> * To establish the relationship between urban redevelopment and crime, multiple mechanisms are hypothesized * **More eyes on the streets** - McMillen, Sarmiento-Barbieri and Singh (*JUE* 2019), Sanfelice (*JEBO* 2019) * **Improvement in street lighting** - Chalfin et al. (*Journal of Quantitative Criminology* 2021) * **Increase in social controls, cohesion, and trust** - Sampson, Raudenbush, and Earls (*Science* 1997) ] .pull-right[ ### Urban renewal, violence and school achievement * The connection between urban renewal and school achievement relies on the potential reduction (or displacement) of violent crimes in the schools' surroundings. Recent studies established a relationship between violent events and school performance - for instance, Sharkey (*PNAS* 2010), Monteiro and Rocha (*Restat* 2017), and Koppensteiner and Menezes (*JOLE* 2021) * Direct victimization and/or violence exposure may cause psychological distress, disrupt school routine, decrease attendance and grades, increase student dropout rates, etc. ] --- # Identification I .pull-left[ * The Town Hall explicitly targeted areas with a low Human Develop Index (HDI). Most areninhas are placed in districts with HDI lower than .29, and it is well-known that homicide rates are higher in those particularly vulnerable boroughs * Hence, naive comparisons of crime levels between neighborhoods with and without areninhas are contaminated by selection bias * This is also true for student outcomes because the student's socioeconomic background is correlated with the place of residence (hence, violence) and confounds school achievement ] .pull-right[ <iframe src="maps/HDI.html" style="width: 600px; height: 500px; border: 5px" alt=""> ] --- # Identification II .pull-left[ * To deal with the endogeneity associated with that setting, the plan is to exploit the staggered implementation of the football fields and leverage street-level crime data to see whether the urban intervention had an impact on violent crimes in the renewed area and its surroundings * The local government built 25 areninhas between June 2014 and January 2019 * The red circle has a 250m radius, the orange 500m, and the yellow 750m * There are 96 census tracts within 250m of an areninha, 351 within 500m, and 667 within 750m ] .pull-right[ <iframe src="maps/areninhas2.html" style="width: 600px; height: 500px; border: 5px" alt=""> ] --- # Identification III .pull-left[ * Assuming that the urban intervention impacts violence levels in the renewed areas and their immediate surroundings, areninhas would benefit schools located (by chance) next to the public equipment * Between 2011 and 2019, 443 (out of 699) municipal and state schools remained active during the entire school year * 18 schools are within 250m of an areninha. 47 schools are within 500m, and 91 schools are within 750m * 200 schools are located in boroughs with low or very low HDI (<.29) * Students who otherwise would experience homicides or other violent crimes while commuting from home to school potentially have a "safer passage" with the implementation of the new policy ] .pull-right[ <iframe src="maps/schools2.html" style="width: 600px; height: 500px; border: 5px" alt=""> ] --- # Threats to Identification .pull-left[ ### Urban renewal and crime <br/> * The key identification assumption is that in the absence of the urban renewal policy, treated areas would have experienced changes in crime similar to nontreated areas in the same borough of the city * If there is either crime displacement or crime reduction (diffusion of benefits) in first-order neighbors, that would bias the control group, invalidating the research design * For now, I propose to use future treated areas as a control group - From 2019 to 2021, the City Hall built 65 new arenas ] .pull-right[ ### Urban renewal, violence and school achievement * The main identification assumption is that after an area arbitrarily close to a school is redeveloped, the only thing that changes discontinuously is the school surroundings that benefit from the new equipment * That means school quality is not changing, and the policing levels are not increasing within that geographic range at the treatment time * It is also implicit that students of public schools within the borough are similar in observable and unobservable factors ] --- # Data 1. Addresses and opening dates of all sports arenas built between 2014 and 2022 and addresses of Schools that remained active during 2011 and 2019 <svg aria-hidden="true" role="img" viewBox="0 0 512 512" style="height:1em;width:1em;vertical-align:-0.125em;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-size:inherit;fill:green;overflow:visible;position:relative;"><path d="M173.898 439.404l-166.4-166.4c-9.997-9.997-9.997-26.206 0-36.204l36.203-36.204c9.997-9.998 26.207-9.998 36.204 0L192 312.69 432.095 72.596c9.997-9.997 26.207-9.997 36.204 0l36.203 36.204c9.997 9.997 9.997 26.206 0 36.204l-294.4 294.401c-9.998 9.997-26.207 9.997-36.204-.001z"/></svg> * Addresses and opening dates of areninhas came from the Fortaleza's City Hall website * I asked the State Government for school addresses, and information about school closures under the "Transparency law 2. Detailed information about crime occurrences in Fortaleza between 2011 and 2019 <svg aria-hidden="true" role="img" viewBox="0 0 512 512" style="height:1em;width:1em;vertical-align:-0.125em;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-size:inherit;fill:red;overflow:visible;position:relative;"><path d="M504 256c0 136.997-111.043 248-248 248S8 392.997 8 256C8 119.083 119.043 8 256 8s248 111.083 248 248zM262.655 90c-54.497 0-89.255 22.957-116.549 63.758-3.536 5.286-2.353 12.415 2.715 16.258l34.699 26.31c5.205 3.947 12.621 3.008 16.665-2.122 17.864-22.658 30.113-35.797 57.303-35.797 20.429 0 45.698 13.148 45.698 32.958 0 14.976-12.363 22.667-32.534 33.976C247.128 238.528 216 254.941 216 296v4c0 6.627 5.373 12 12 12h56c6.627 0 12-5.373 12-12v-1.333c0-28.462 83.186-29.647 83.186-106.667 0-58.002-60.165-102-116.531-102zM256 338c-25.365 0-46 20.635-46 46 0 25.364 20.635 46 46 46s46-20.636 46-46c0-25.365-20.635-46-46-46z"/></svg> * The source of this data is the statistical group of the Secretariat of Public Security of Ceara. **Currently, their policy is to release crime occurrences per Security Area** * I need the type of crime (homicide, theft, robbery, etc.), and the time and address of each occurrence * Using Google API, one can get the coordinates of each occurrence and identify crimes that happened in a public way 3. Individual information about students enrolled in municipal and state schools (address, attendance, math and language grades, etc.) <svg aria-hidden="true" role="img" viewBox="0 0 448 512" style="height:1em;width:0.88em;vertical-align:-0.125em;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-size:inherit;fill:#FDDA0D;overflow:visible;position:relative;"><path d="M432 304c0 114.9-93.1 208-208 208S16 418.9 16 304c0-104 76.3-190.2 176-205.5V64h-28c-6.6 0-12-5.4-12-12V12c0-6.6 5.4-12 12-12h120c6.6 0 12 5.4 12 12v40c0 6.6-5.4 12-12 12h-28v34.5c37.5 5.8 71.7 21.6 99.7 44.6l27.5-27.5c4.7-4.7 12.3-4.7 17 0l28.3 28.3c4.7 4.7 4.7 12.3 0 17l-29.4 29.4-.6.6C419.7 223.3 432 262.2 432 304zm-176 36V188.5c0-6.6-5.4-12-12-12h-40c-6.6 0-12 5.4-12 12V340c0 6.6 5.4 12 12 12h40c6.6 0 12-5.4 12-12z"/></svg> * Administrative data (SPAECE microdata) was requested from the State Board of Education on January 10, 2022. No answer so far * The main outcomes at the individual level (grades and attendance) come from this source * **Student's addresses might be used to develop commuting patterns from home to school**