On the Relationship Between School Dropouts and Crime in the Netherlands

This bachelor thesis investigates the relationship between school dropouts and contemporaneous crime in the Netherlands between 2005 and 2011. To do this, fixed effects models with municipality level data are exploited. The results indicate that there is a positive relationship between school dropout rates and both property and violent crime in large municipalities. On the contrary, there appears to be no statistically significant relationship in middle-sized and small municipalities. More specifically, a twofold increase of the dropout rate in large municipalities is associated with an approximately 20.6 percent increase in contemporaneous property crime rate, ceteris paribus. An equivalent increase of the dropout rate in large municipalities leads to a close to 2 percent increase in violent crime rate, all else equal. Despite its limitations, this paper acts as a stepping stone for further research regarding the causes of the dropout-crime relationship. Additionally, it gives a better idea of the types of crime dropouts in the Netherlands are associated with, in the hope that it will help policy makers in their attempt to reduce these.