Publications

Safer in School? The Impact of Compulsory Schooling on Maltreatment and Associated Harms (with Nicole Black, David W. Johnston, and Leonie Segal)

The Review of Economics and Statistics. Forthcoming.

Abused and neglected children are at extreme risk of school dropout, poor health, and destructive behaviours, yet evidence on interventions that prevent maltreatment and its harms is limited. We use a South Australian education reform to examine whether extending the school-leaving age from 16 to 17 improves maltreatment-related outcomes. Using administrative records and regression-discontinuity techniques, we find that the reform reduced first-time cases of maltreatment reported to Child Protection Services (CPS). Among adolescents with past CPS involvement, it also reduced emergency healthcare utilisation. Our findings suggest school attendance can improve child safety, with an incapacitation effect as the likely mechanism.

• Ungated version of the manuscript available here.

• Recipient of the Best Paper/Presentation Prize at the 2022 PhD Conference in Economics and Business (link).

• Previously circulated as "Compulsory Schooling and Adverse Outcomes of Maltreated Children" and "Safer in School? Compulsory Schooling Reduces Maltreatment and Associated Harms", and as my PhD thesis chapter.

Working Papers

Does Schooling Reduce Child Maltreatment? Evidence from School Entry Laws in South Australia (with Nicole Black, David W. Johnston, and Leonie Segal)

(Under embargo by data custodians, available upon request)

Protecting children from maltreatment is a global priority. In this paper, we investigate whether schooling reduces children's exposure to abuse and neglect in the household at ages 4-5. Our identification approach exploits exogenous variation in when children start primary school based on their date of birth in a given year. Using linked administrative data from South Australia, we find that children who start primary school a year earlier are less likely to be reported to Child Protection Services (CPS) in that corresponding year, even after accounting for increases in reporting by education professionals. We find suggestive evidence of larger benefits for disadvantaged children and children with past maltreatment exposure, and no evidence of adverse spillover effects on younger siblings. 

• Recipient of the Best Paper Award at the 2024 Australian Health Economics Doctoral (AHED) Workshop (link)

Work in Progress

The Impact of Compulsory Schooling on Teen Fertility and the Intergenerational Transmission of Maltreatment (with Nicole Black, David W. Johnston, and Leonie Segal)

How Does Subsidised Guardianship Affect Children in Foster Care? (with Francis Graham)

Schooling, Child Labour, and Household Violence (with Sara Hutchinson-Tovar and Giovanni van Empel)

Determinants of Reproducibility and Replicability (contributor to a large-scale meta-analysis led by Abel Brodeur, Derek Mikola, and Nikolai Cook)

• Pre-analysis plan (link)