Seminar: Partha Deb (Hunter)

Title: Effects of School Shootings on Risky Behavior, Health and Human Capital

Abstract: In this paper, we examine the impacts of school shootings on human health and capital of student survivors as adults in their twenties and early thirties. Our data on school shooting events is from a recent, comprehensive database of school shootings compiled by the Center for Homeland Defense and Security. We use incidents from 1994 to 2005 in most of our analyses, and incidents from 1993-2006 in a robustness check. We merge the school shootings data to the 2003-2012 years of the Behavioral Risk Factors Surveillance System data on respondents from 23 to 32 years of age. We find substantial evidence of declines in health and well-being, worse health-related behaviors, more risky behaviors and worse education and labor market outcomes. We find that the effects are stronger among those exposed 6-12 years prior to the survey as compared to those exposed 13-18 years prior to the survey. We also find that the effects somewhat different among the younger age group of 23-27 year olds as compared to the older age group of 28-32 year olds.