The Effect of Education on Criminal Convictions and Incarceration: Causal Evidence from Micro-data

Do compulsory schooling laws reduce crime? Previous evidence for the U.S. from the 1960s and 1970s suggests they do, primarily working through their effect on educational attainment to generate a causal impact on crime. In this paper, we consider whether more recent experience replicates this. There are two key findings. First, there is a strong and consistent negative effect on crime from stricter compulsory schooling laws. Second, there is a weaker and sometimes non-existent link between such laws and educational attainment. As a result, credible causal estimates of the education-crime relationship cannot in general be identified for the more recent period, though they can for some groups with lower education levels (in particular, for blacks).

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“…Evidence from a schooling reform in Sweden has been analysed by Hjalmarsson et al (2015) and Meghir et al (2012 …”

Section: Existing Evidencementioning

confidence: 99%

Crime, compulsory schooling laws and education

Bell

Costa

Machin

2016

Economics of Education Review

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“…23 A restriction imposed is that only pilot tracks which corresponded to tracks in the regular system are included (see Table A.1). 24 We have also excluded some individuals who were younger than 15 or older than 20 when they enrolled in upper 22 Only a few previous studies that analyzes crime have used Swedish individual conviction data merged to population registers; see Grönqvist (2013);Hällsten, Sarnecki and Szulkin (2011);Hjalmarsson, Holmlund and Lindquist (2011);Meghir, Palme and Schnabel (2011). 23 In section 3.4 we investigate whether the availability of pilot programs affected selection into vocational tracks.…”

Section: Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This way we avoid the possibility that municipality of upper secondary school attendance may be endogenous with respect to the location of the pilot. 26 The main advantage of using individual level conviction data is that we can investigate whether the potential effect on crime differs in subgroups of the population.…”

Section: Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…26 It is unlikely that students would move already during compulsory school in order to take advantage of the pilot tracks, especially as it was already possible to apply to upper secondary schools in municipalities other than one's own. Moreover, the decision of where to locate the new available pilot slots each year was not taken until during the following spring, i.e.…”

Section: Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Machin, Marie and Vujic (2011) is another example, concluding that education can be an important measure for reducing crime, based on their UK study. Recent Swedish studies exploiting a compulsory school reform also find a negative impact of compulsory education on crime (Meghir, Palme and Schnabel 2011;Hjalmarsson, Holmlund and Lindquist 2011).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Education and criminal behavior: Insights from an expansion of upper secondary school

et al. 2018

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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. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your personal and scholarly purposes.You are not to copy documents for public or commercial purposes, to exhibit the documents publicly, to make them publicly available on the internet, or to distribute or otherwise use the documents in public. licence. www.econstor.eu We study the impact on criminal activity from a large scale Swedish reform of vocational upper secondary education, extending programs from two to three years and adding more general theoretical content. The reform directly concerns age groups where criminal activity is high and students who are highly overrepresented among criminal offenders. The nature of the reform and the rich administrative data allow us to shed light on several behavioral mechanisms. Our results show that the prolonged and more general education lead to a reduction in property crime, but no significant decrease in violent crime. The effect is mainly concentrated to the third year after enrollment, which suggests that being in school reduces the opportunities and/or inclinations to commit crime. was implemented gradually over time in different municipalities. According to Hall (2012), the reform increased average educational attainment, but also led to a substantial increase in dropout rates among low-performing students. If the documents have been made available under an Open Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E S Education and CriminalWe complement and add to the existing literature in several ways. Most importantly, the nature of the reform and the richness of the data allow us to provide one of the first pieces of evidence on the causal effect on criminal activity of making secondary education more general. As related policies are being discussed and implemented throughout the developed world, our findings are likely to be relevant outside the specific setting that we analyze. Moreover, we can study both long-and short-run effects on criminal behavior, as well as separate between crimes committed on school operating days and when the school is in recess. Also, we study asymmetric effects of the reform across different student characteristics, among them the predicted dropout risk and previous school performance. Taken together, these sources of variation enable us to shed light on the mechanisms through which education can ...

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The highly educated live longer: The role of time preference, cognitive ability, and educational plans

Norrgren

2023

Health Economics

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Using Swedish data on a cohort born in 1953, interviewed in 1966 (age 13), and followed with register data until 2018 (age 65), this study shows that one more year of schooling predicts a 17% lower risk of early mortality. Addressing concerns of potential selection bias, the mortality inequality by educational attainment persists when extensive controls are included in the regression. Adding information on background health, gender, socioeconomic variables, as well as adolescents' early educational plans, cognitive ability, and time preferences, only result in a 2‐percentage point change in the mortality risk by years of education. Even when adolescents' applications to upper‐secondary school and years 6 and 9 grades are controlled for, completion of upper‐secondary and university education remain strong predictors of future health. Yet, the study also finds that the measure of future health matters for the stability of the results.

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The Effect of Education on Criminal Convictions and Incarceration: Causal Evidence from Micro-data

Cited by 154 publications

References 24 publications

Crime, compulsory schooling laws and education

Crime, compulsory schooling laws and education

Education and criminal behavior: Insights from an expansion of upper secondary school

The highly educated live longer: The role of time preference, cognitive ability, and educational plans

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