Saved by the bell? The effect of schooling on crime against women

Abstract

Brazil is among the five countries with high female homicide rates. About a third of these homicides occur inside the household. Traditionally, studies have investigated the relation between education and criminality from the criminal’s point of view. This study highlights the effects of male and female educations on the female homicide rate. Increasing their schooling helps to improve women’s access to paid employment and to knowledge of their rights. We conduct a panel analysis with 645 municipalities in the richest Brazilian state, São Paulo, from 2003 to 2018. Our estimative shows that an increase of one percentage point in male schooling decreases the female homicide rate by 0.27 percentual points, while female schooling decreases that rate by 0.21 percentage points. We find both effects in small municipalities in which school enrollment is lower and large ones in which female homicides rates are higher