Terrorism, media coverage and education: Evidence from al-Shabaab attacks in Kenya

Abstract

We relate terrorist attacks to media signal coverage and schooling in Kenya to examine how terrorism
alters the demand for education through perceived risks and returns. Exploiting variation in wireless
signal coverage and attacks across space and time, we establish that media access reinforces negative
effects of terrorism on schooling. Our results are robust to instrumenting both media signal and
attacks. We also find that attacks raise self-reported fears for households with media access. Based on
these insights, we estimate a simple structural model where heterogeneous households experiencing
terrorism form beliefs about risks and returns to education. We allow these beliefs to be affected by
media and find that households with media access significantly over-estimate fatality risks.