Group Threat, Police Officer Diversity and the Deadly Use of Police Force

Prior research indicates that (perceived) group threat measured in terms of population shares and race-specific crime rates are important explanations for variations in police killings across cities in the United States. The authors argue that a diverse police force that proportionally represents the population it serves mitigates group threat and thereby reduces the number of officer-involved killings. The findings represent one of the first analysis of a highly relevant contemporary issue based on a recent and high-quality dataset from 2013 to 2015. By highlighting the interaction between group threat and the proportional representation of minority groups in police departments, the research advances group conflict and threat theories with important theoretical and policy implications for law enforcement and representative bureaucracies more broadly

School Context, Peers and the Educational Achievement of Girls and Boys

Today, boys dominate among high school dropouts, special education students, and literally any failed or special needs category throughout adolescence pinpointing boys as the troublemaker in modern educational systems. The notorious under-performance of boys in school and their tendency to disrupt the learning process in the class room has sparked intense academic as well as public debates about the causes of what many now call the "problem with boys". Yet, historically, the lower performance of boys in school is not a new phenomenon. In fact, researchers overwhelmingly agree that girls and boys have similar levels of mental ability and generally observe relatively small changes in academic performance over the last decades. What is new is the striking reversal of the gender gap in educational attainment, which has changed from a male to a female advantage. At the same time, girls continue to lag behind in terms of science, engineering, and technology degrees. These persisting gender differences are not only relevant for gender equality but also for the supply of qualified labor-a linchpin for the future of the U.S. economy in an increasingly competitive global environment. A widespread argument among parents, teachers, and policy makers alike has been that boys resistance to school is part of their masculinity: Boys are simply more active and disobedient to authority. Others blame schools for what they see as a de-masculinized learning environment and a tendency to negatively evaluate boys for fitting into this environment less well than girls. Yet, the role of the school context and the connection between school resources and the gender gap remains controversial. Research on the effect of schools dates back to the 1966 Coleman report and developed out of the concern for equality of educational opportunity by social class and race. This original focus and much subsequent work condemned the unequal access to high quality schools for black and white kids and called for the desegregation of schools. Now that a growing gender gap in educational attainment has emerged, it is natural to extend this line of research and ask whether schools affect gender inequality as well, and if so, what are the mechanisms by which this occurs. The goal of this dissertation is to address this question and examine the role of the school context for gender differences in education and thereby challenge the view of boys as universally disengaged from school and opposed to authority. For this purpose, the three papers in this dissertation each examine different aspects of this broader question. Together, these three articles make important contributions to our understanding of gender differences in educational outcomes, and suggest concrete policy implications about the educational shortcomings of boys, and the persisting gender gap in STEM degrees. They show that peer effects are larger for boys than girls and that this gender difference can be explained by differences in the social support for academic work in the male and female peer culture. These findings shift the focus from masculinity as inherently based on resistance to school towards the importance of the local school environment for the construction of gender identities as well as school-related attitudes, behavior, and the performance of boys and girls. My findings also point to the high school years as the life course period that should be targeted to increase the number of women with STEM BAs, and provide evidence that high school interventions might be effective to achieve that goal

School Context and the Gender Gap in Educational Achievement

Today, boys generally under-perform relative to girls in schools throughout the industrialized world. Building on theories about gender identity and reports from prior ethnographic classroom observations, we argue that the school environment channels the conception of masculinity in the peer culture, and thereby either fosters or inhibits the development of anti-school attitudes and behavior among boys. Girls' peer groups, in contrast, do not vary as strongly with the social environment in the extent to which school engagement is stigmatized as "un-feminine." As a consequence, boys are more sensitive to school resources that create a learning oriented environment than are girls. Our analyses use a quasi-experimental research design to estimate the gender difference in the causal effect on test scores, and focus on peer SES as an important school resource. We argue that assignment to 5th grade classrooms within Berlin schools is practically random, and we evaluate this selection process by an examination of Berlin's school regulations, by simulation analysis, and by qualitative interviews with school principles. Estimates of the effect of SES composition on male and female performance strongly support our central hypothesis, and other analyses support our proposed mechanism as the likely explanation of the gender differences in the causal effect

High School Environments, STEM Orientations, and the Gender Gap in Science and Engineering Degrees

This study examines two important and related dimensions of the persisting gender gap in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) bachelor degrees: First, the life-course timing of a stable gender gap in STEM orientation, and second, variations in the gender gap across high schools. We build on existing psychological and sociological gender theories to develop a theoretical argument about the development of STEM orientations during adolescence and the potential influence of the local high school environment on the formation of STEM orientations by females and males. Using the National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS), we then decompose the gender gap in STEM bachelor degrees and show that the solidification of the gender gap in STEM orientations is largely a process that occurs during the high school years. Far from being a fixed attribute of adolescent development, however, we find that the size of the gender gap in STEM orientation is quite sensitive to local high school influences; going to school at a high school that is supportive of a positive orientation by females towards math and science can reduce the gender gap in STEM bachelor degrees by 25% or more

Aggressive Policing and the Educational Performance of Minority Youth

An increasing number of minority youth are confronted with the criminal justice system. But how does the expansion of police presence in poor urban communities affect educational outcomes? Previous research points at multiple mechanisms with opposing effects. This article presents the first causal evidence of the impact of aggressive policing on the educational performance of minority youth. Under Operation Impact, the New York Police Department (NYPD) saturated high crime areas with additional police officers with the mission to engage in aggressive, order maintenance policing. To estimate the effect, we use administrative data from about 250,000 adolescents aged 9 to 15 and a Difference-in-Difference approach based on variation in the timing of police surges across neighborhoods. We find that exposure to police surges significantly reduced test scores for African-American boys, consistent with their greater exposure to policing. The size of the effect increases with age but there is no discernible effect for African-American girls and Hispanic students. Aggressive policing can thus lower the educational performance of African-American youth. These findings provide evidence that the consequences of policing extend into key domains of social life, with implications for the educational trajectories of minority youth and social inequality more broadly

Living on the Edge. Neighborhood Boundaries and the Spatial Dynamics of Violent Crime

Neighborhood boundaries are a defining aspect of highly segregated urban areas. Yet, few studies examine the particular challenges and spatial processes that occur at the bordering region between two neighborhoods. Extending the growing literature on spatial interdependence, this article argues that neighborhood boundaries—defined as sharp changes in the racial or socioeconomic composition of neighborhoods—are a salient feature of the spatial structure with implications for violent crime and other outcomes. Boundaries lack the social control and cohesion of adjacent homogeneous areas, are contested between groups provoking intergroup conflict, and create opportunities for criminal behavior. This article presents evidence linking racial neighborhood boundaries to increased violent crime. The findings illustrate the importance of neighborhood boundaries for our understanding of spatial dimensions of population dynamics above and beyond the characteristics of neighborhoods

Living on the Edge. Neighborhood Boundaries and the Spatial Dynamics of Violent Crime

These files contain the code and data to replicate the results presented in Legewie (2018) "Living on the Edge. Neighborhood Boundaries and the Spatial Dynamics of Violent Crime" Demography

Contested Boundaries: Explaining Where Ethnoracial Diversity Provokes Neighborhood Conflict

Concerns about neighborhood erosion and conflict in ethnically diverse settings occupy scholars, policy makers, and pundits alike; but the empirical evidence is inconclusive. This article proposes the contested boundaries hypothesis as a refined contextual explanation focused on poorly defined boundaries between ethnic and racial groups. The authors argue that neighborhood conflict is more likely to occur at fuzzy boundaries defined as interstitial or transitional areas sandwiched between two homogeneous communities. Edge detection algorithms from computer vision and image processing allow them to identify these boundaries. Data from 4.7 million time-and geo-coded 311 service requests from New York City support their argument: complaints about neighbors making noise, drinking in public, or blocking the driveway are more frequent at fuzzy boundaries rather than crisp, polarized borders. By focusing on the broader sociospatial structure, the contested boundaries hypothesis overcomes the aspatial treatment of neighborhoods as isolated areas in research on ethnic diversity

Aggressive Policing and the Educational Performance of Minority Youth

An increasing number of minority youth experience contact with the criminal justice system. But how does the expansion of police presence in poor urban communities affect educational outcomes? Previous research points at multiple mechanisms with opposing effects. This article presents the first causal evidence of the impact of aggressive policing on minority youths’ educational performance. Under Operation Impact, the New York Police Department (NYPD) saturated high-crime areas with additional police officers with the mission to engage in aggressive, order-maintenance policing. To estimate the effect of this policing program, we use administrative data from more than 250,000 adolescents age 9 to 15 and a difference-in-differences approach based on variation in the timing of police surges across neighborhoods. We find that exposure to police surges significantly reduced test scores for African American boys, consistent with their greater exposure to policing. The size of the effect increases with age, but there is no discernible effect for African American girls and Hispanic students. Aggressive policing can thus lower educational performance for some minority groups. These findings provide evidence that the consequences of policing extend into key domains of social life, with implications for the educational trajectories of minority youth and social inequality more broadly

Replication code for "Long-Term Exposure to Neighborhood Policing and the Racial/Ethnic Gap in High School Graduation"

Researchers are increasingly exploring the consequences of policing for the educational outcomes of minority youth. This study contributes to this literature by asking three questions. First, what are racial/ethnic disparities in long-term exposure to neighborhood policing? Second, how does this exposure affect high school graduation? Third, how much of the ethnoracial gap in high school graduation would remain if neighborhood policing was equalized? To address these questions, we use data from the New York City Department of Education and follow five cohorts of NYC public school students from middle to high school. Our findings reveal starkly different experiences with neighborhood policing across racial/ethnic groups. Using novel methods for time-varying treatment effects, we find that long-term exposure to neighborhood policing has negative effects on high school graduation, with important differences across racial/ethnic groups. Using gap-closing estimands, we show that assigning a sample of Black and Latino students to the same level of neighborhood policing as White students would close the Black–White gap in high school graduation by more than one quarter and the Latino–White gap by almost one fifth. Alternatively, we explore interventions where policing is solely a function of violent crime, which close the Black–White gap by as much as one tenth. Our study advances previous research by focusing on cumulative, long-term exposure to neighborhood policing and by assessing various counterfactual scenarios that inform research and policy