Economics Applied Micro Seminar - Martin Foureaux Koppensteiner -"Transitory Health Shocks, Human Capital and Crime: Evidence from Linked Administrative Data in Brazil"

This paper estimates the causal effects of dengue fever — a transitory infectious disease — on human capital and criminal behavior among secondary school students in Brazil. Using matched administrative data linking official dengue notifications, school census records, and police reports for the universe of public secondary students over eleven years, we exploit within-school and within-neighborhood variation in infection to identify causal effects. Dengue infection during the school year increases grade retention by approximately 5 percent and school dropout by roughly 4 percent, with effects driven partly by short-run attendance losses. Crucially, infected students show persistently higher criminal involvement — 9 to 12 percent — over the following three years, concentrated in property and violent offenses. Complementary event-study analysis confirms the absence of pre-trends and documents the dynamic evolution of these effects, lending further robustness to the causal interpretation. Effects are larger for female students and those in later grades. These findings reveal that even brief, non-chronic illnesses can generate lasting educational and social externalities, with direct implications for the targeting of dengue vaccination programs and the integration of public health interventions into education policy.