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The Social Costs of Incarceration

The Social Costs of Incarceration. Discussant: Robert LaLonde The University of Chicago June 6, 2006. Outcomes of Interest. How Does Incarceration Affect: Graduation rates of Children? Mother’s educational attainment? Poverty/Family Income? Aids/HIV? Two Strategies:

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The Social Costs of Incarceration

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  1. The Social Costs of Incarceration Discussant: Robert LaLonde The University of Chicago June 6, 2006

  2. Outcomes of Interest • How Does Incarceration Affect: • Graduation rates of Children? • Mother’s educational attainment? • Poverty/Family Income? • Aids/HIV? • Two Strategies: • Aggregated measures of adult incarceration • Individual measures of juvenile incarceration

  3. CJI and HS Completion • Effect of juvenile incarceration on HS graduation rates (by age 19). • Using NLSY97 • Compare incarcerated to observationally similar children who are convicted, but not incarcerated. (See Table 3.) • Similar selection: arrested, charged, convicted. • Very rich set of control variables. • Effect: 9 percentage points or ~ 25%.

  4. Comments • Is this effect too big? • Missing family SES variables. • I agree that the missing variables likely less correlated with incarceration. • The “effect” of sex before 15 is about the same! • Why is incarcerated before age 16 causal, but suspended before age 12 not? • How many girls driving the female results? • Makes strong case with cross sectional data.

  5. Male Imprisonment on Child Poverty • Outcomes: • Whether African-American child under 15 lives in household in poverty. • Log of family income. • Statistical Model: • Yijt = XijtB + dINRjt + ft + fj + uijt • The term “INRjt” is the incarceration rate of 17 to 40 year old African-American men. • Ranges from 1.2% to 7.3%.

  6. Comments #1 • Are effects on poverty too big? • Logit coefficient: 1.207 • Marginal probability 1.207*0.4*0.6 ~ .30 • A 1 percentage point change in INR raised child poverty rate by 30 percentage points? • A 1 percentage point change in INR raised child poverty rate by .3 percentage points? • Single mother family coefficient: 11.378. • Effects on log family income • OLS coefficient: -0.073

  7. Comments #2 • The effect of INR is identified using state-time interactions. • State*time trends (random growth component) • Omitted State*time variables: • Yijt = XijtB + d1INRjt + d2emp_popjt + ft + fj + uijt • Measures of state*time economic/labor market conditions for African-Americans are more important determinants of poverty and incomes. • Fluctuations in African-American unemployment rate. • The effects on mother’s education…

  8. Needs Figure That Reveals What is Going on with the Data Child Povertyj,t – Child Poverty j,. High Incarceration Growth States Low Incarceration Growth States Time

  9. Should INR Affect Family Income? • Direct Effects: Income lost while male is in prison. • Indirect effects: Effect of prison on subsequent earnings? • Conjecture: The former effect is small and the later effect is negligible. • Jeff Kling’s research • Shawn Bushway’s edited volume • My research on incarcerated women

  10. Incarceration on AIDS Infection • Outcome: • Number of new AIDS cases per 100,000 in race, age, state, and year group. • Statistical Model: • Yrajt = d1IMrajt + d2IFrajt + fraj + fjt + frt + fat + urajt • IMrajt male proportion incarcerated in rajt group. • Allow for a lagged structure. • Long run effects = S of lags.

  11. Comments • Where are the economic determinants of health outcomes? • In fjt • Potential differential effects of economic conditions on race and age groupings used to identify the effects d1d2 • Sum of lags is ~37 (in Table 3, column 3) • On pages 32 – 35 : how big are these effects? • Sustained 0.01 increase in male group “raj” incarceration raises AIDS rate by .37? • “Much of differential …attributable to historical differences in the rates at which black men are incarcerated.” • Instruments: State legal regimes on sentencing.

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