Department of Economics

In this study, I attempt to identify whether deteriorating macroeconomic health can lead primary and secondary students to get into more trouble at school. Previous literature suggests that family-level job loss increases child problem behavior, mostly by increasing internalizing problem behaviors such as anxiety, depression, and social withdrawal. I suggest that this follows children into the classroom, leading to increased disciplinary actions by schools. Using county-level data in Arkansas from the fifteen school years between 2004 and 2018, I employ multiple regression and fixed-effect models to examine the effects of changes in unemployment on various disciplinary outcomes (out-of-school suspensions, in-school suspensions, expulsions, and corporal punishment) for students in primary and secondary schools. Due to inconsistencies in Arkansas' discipline data, the results presented in this paper should be approached with skepticism. Only one result is consistent among the regression models I test|when county unemployment rises the usage of corporal punishment rises. This may not be evidence that student misbehavior increases when the economy is poor, rather it may suggest that teachers and administrators are substituting other disciplinary measures with corporal punishment.