Our Seminars & Workshops

Title: Transitory health shocks, human capital and crime: Evidence from Linked Administrative Data in Brazil.

Abstract: This paper provides the first causal evidence on the effects of dengue fever on educational and

behavioural outcomes. Using matched administrative data linking official dengue notifications,

school census records, and police reports for the universe of public secondary school students in

Minas Gerais, Brazil, we estimate the impact of individual health shocks on grade progression,

dropout, and subsequent involvement in crime. Identification exploits within-school and within-

neighbourhood variation in dengue exposure over an eleven-year period, with rich student and

classroom controls and detailed temperature measures. We find that dengue infections during

the school year increase grade retention by about 5 percent and school dropout by roughly

4 percent relative to baseline means. Linking the same students to police records, we show that

dengue infections also raise criminal involvement by 9–12 percent in the following years, driven

primarily by property and violent offenses. The results reveal that even short-lived illnesses can

have lasting consequences for human capital formation and youth behaviour, underscoring the

broader social costs of infectious diseases and the potential gains from targeted vaccination and

vector-control policies.