Coca is gone: Evaluating the unintended consequences of crop eradication on educational outcomes in a former cocaine enclave in the Upper Peruvian Amazon

Crop eradication is the main policy aimed at reducing the production of coca cultivation in cocaine producing countries. This article analyzes the unintended consequences that Peru’s largest crop eradication campaign had on educational outcomes in the former cocaine enclave of Upper Huallaga and Monzón Valleys (UHMV). Employing a town identification approach that followed crop eradication on a yearly basis between 2007 and 2013, together with the quantification of eradicated coca, we selected 325 towns located in UHMV. After checking for identification assumptions and sensitivity checks, our Differences-in-Differences results show that crop eradication reduced almost 1.5 years of schooling for the youngest cohort relative to older age cohorts. Additionally, our results suggest that crop eradication affected other educational outcomes, including a decrease in the probability of school completion and contributed to an increase in illiteracy in the study area. Our exploration of mechanisms suggests that educational outcomes are negatively affected by crop eradication because without coca young people take on more household and family-business work, especially when the household head is self-employed.