The effect of degree attainment on arrests: Evidence from a randomized social experiment

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit organization supported by Deutsche Post Foundation. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. Terms of use: Documents in D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E SIZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author.IZA Discussion Paper No. 9695 January 2016 ABSTRACTThe Effect of Degree Attainment on Arrests: Evidence from a Randomized Social Experiment * We examine the effect of educational attainment on criminal behavior using random assignment into Job Corps (JC) -the United States' largest education and vocational training program for disadvantaged youth -as a source of exogenous variability in educational attainment. We allow such random assignment to violate the exclusion restriction when used as an instrument by employing nonparametric bounds. The attainment of a degree is estimated to reduce arrest rates by at most 11.8 percentage points (about 32.6%). We also find suggestive evidence that the effects may be larger for males relative to females, and larger for black males relative to white males. Remarkably, our 95 percent confidence intervals on the causal effect of education on arrests are very similar to the corresponding confidence intervals on the same effect from studies exploiting changes in compulsory schooling laws as an instrumental variable in the estimation of the effect of education on arrest rates (e.g., Lochner and Moretti, 2004). JEL Classification:I2, K42

National Guard Youth ChalleNGe: Program Progress in 2015–2016

“…Some of the most basic examples of poor choices that young people make are reflected in risky be hav iors, such as not wearing a seatbelt (10 percent), riding in a car operated by someone who had been drinking alcohol (28 percent), carry ing a weapon (18 percent), and using alcohol or marijuana (42 and 21 percent, respectively). 1 These be hav iors place young people at risk of potential run-ins with the law, further jeopardizing their future well-being-not to mention that these be hav iors can be life-threatening (Freeman and Simonsen, 2015;Amin et al, 2016). Young people also face critical decisions about their education, training, and career choices that will have a direct link to their long-term livelihood, financial in de pendence, and successful transition into adulthood.…”

Conscription and Military Service

“…xxi An alternative channel through which the draft lotteries may have a direct effect on incarceration and recidivism outcomes is the "dodging-up" avoidance behavior, such as obtaining admissions into college to avoid the draft (for instance, Card and Lemieux, 2001). This type of avoidance behavior, resulting in higher educational attainment, is predicted to reduce incidence of criminal activities given the negative relationship between education and crime (Lochner and Moretti, 2004;Amin et al, 2016). In this regard, our results suggest that the "dodging down" dominates the "dodging up" avoidance behavior in the current context.…”

“…xxiv Note that, in contrast to other papers using nonparametric bounds (FF-L, 2010(FF-L, , 2013Bampasidou et al, 2014;Amin et al, 2016), we do not report the estimated average pre-draft outcomes for the compliers stratum. Instead, we report estimated pre-draft outcomes for the groups consisting of always-takers & compliers, and never-takers & compliers.…”

“…Second, the paper contributes to the analysis of the crime and incarceration effects of the Vietnam era military service (for instance, Bouffard, 2014;Lindo and Stoecker, 2014;Teachman and Tedrow, 2014b) and the growing literature that employs military drafts (or similar IVs) in other countries to analyze the effect of military service on crime and incarceration outcomes (for instance, Galiani, Rossi, and Schargrodsky, 2011;Albaek et al 2017, Siminski, Ville, andPaull, 2016;Hjalmarsson and Lindquist, 2019). Third, it contributes to the growing literature employing nonparametric bounds in IV models without the ER assumption (for instance, FF-L, 2013;Amin et al, 2016;CFF-L, 2019;, by illustrating how this approach can be applied to situations where individual-level data is not available and auxiliary data is employed to undertake statistical inference under a bounded outcome. Lastly, we contribute to the growing literature on statistical methodologies to test implications of the assumptions underlying the conventional IV model with heterogeneous effects (Kitagawa, 2015;Huber and Mellace, 2015;FF-L, 2013;Mourifié and Wan, 2017) by empirically assessing the validity of the ER in the current empirical context, while adjusting for multiple testing.…”

Economics of Youth Mental Health: essays on Juvenile Delinquency, Education and Policy

“…Furthermore, I thank Jos Lubberman, Jochen Mierau and Sándor Sóvágó for helpful comments. Deming, 2011;Amin et al, 2016). Indeed, differences in child educational performance have persistent impact throughout the life-cycle.…”