Rise in homicide rates linked to kids' failure in school

A rise in killings in a community tracks closely with a rise in the number of young children who fail a grade in elementary school, according to new research analyzing 21 years of homicide rates and school achievement data.

The findings, from two researchers at New York University, suggest that when violence hits a community, many of its effects may be largely unseen: Higher violent crime rates may raise kids' stress and anxiety, and interrupt sleep and concentration patterns, which affect school performance and could undermine school culture, the researchers say.

Higher crime also may prompt parents to turn to harsher parenting styles, keep kids home from school more often and restrict social interactions with other kids, all of which can hamper a child's ability to do well in school.

The researchers based their work on homicide and school retention rates across Mexico from 1990 to 2010, but they say the connection likely will hold true for many other nations, including the U.S.

In Mexico, homicide rates shot up between 2007 and 2010 during a spate of drug-related killings that increased the homicide rate from eight to 23 murders per 100,000 people.

"The hidden cost of violence is very hard to see (and) to measure, but it's very important to measure in terms of the well-being of the human population," says NYU's Florencia Torche, one of the co-authors.

She and her fellow researcher, Monica L. Caudillo, studied data from 94% of Mexican public and private elementary schools, covering more than 14 million students. The remainder, which serve indigenous students, were not included in the school census on which the analysis is based.

Torche says the analysis suggests that when extreme violence happens, "children react with fear, stress and anxiety, and that hampers their ability to learn and perform."

Because of Mexico's ongoing drug war, she warns, "you may have a whole generation of children who are affected by these events."

Torche says previous research has focused mostly on the effects of violence on older students — for instance, whether they drop out of high school. She says she hopes the new findings will prompt educators to take another look at unexamined causes of persistent achievement gaps in younger children, because those who live in poverty also are more likely to live in places with higher violent crime rates.

The study appears in the April issue of Sociology of Education.