IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/12003.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Incarceration Length, Employment, and Earnings

Author

Listed:
  • Jeffrey R. Kling

Abstract

This paper estimates effects of increases in incarceration length on employment and earnings prospects of individuals after their release from prison. I utilize a variety of research designs including controlling for observable factors and using instrumental variables for incarceration length based on randomly assigned judges with different sentencing propensities. The results show no consistent evidence of adverse labor market consequences of longer incarceration length using any of the analytical methods in either the state system in Florida or the federal system in California.

Suggested Citation

  • Jeffrey R. Kling, 2006. "Incarceration Length, Employment, and Earnings," NBER Working Papers 12003, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:12003
    Note: LS
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w12003.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Russell Davidson & James G. MacKinnon, 2006. "The case against JIVE," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 21(6), pages 827-833, September.
    2. Anderson, James M & Kling, Jeffrey R & Stith, Kate, 1999. "Measuring Interjedge Sentencing Disparity: Before and After the Federal Sentencing Guidelines," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 42(1), pages 271-307, April.
    3. Waldfogel, Joel, 1994. "Does conviction have a persistent effect on income and employment?," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(1), pages 103-119, March.
    4. Angrist, Joshua D, 1990. "Lifetime Earnings and the Vietnam Era Draft Lottery: Evidence from Social Security Administrative Records," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(3), pages 313-336, June.
    5. John H. Tyler & Jeffrey R. Kling, 2004. "Prison-Based Education and Re-Entry into the Mainstream Labor Market," Working Papers 12, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Industrial Relations Section..
    6. Bruce Western & Jeffrey R. Kling & David F. Weiman, 2001. "The Labor Market Consequences of Incarceration," Working Papers 829, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Industrial Relations Section..
    7. Jeffrey Grogger, 1995. "The Effect of Arrests on the Employment and Earnings of Young Men," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 110(1), pages 51-71.
    8. Kornfeld, Robert & Bloom, Howard S, 1999. "Measuring Program Impacts on Earnings and Employment: Do Unemployment Insurance Wage Reports from Employers Agree with Surveys of Individuals?," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 17(1), pages 168-197, January.
    9. Lott, John R, Jr, 1992. "Do We Punish High Income Criminals Too Heavily?," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 30(4), pages 583-608, October.
    10. Daniel A. Ackerberg & Paul J. Devereux, 2006. "Comment on ‘The case against JIVE’," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 21(6), pages 835-838, September.
    11. Stock, James H & Wright, Jonathan H & Yogo, Motohiro, 2002. "A Survey of Weak Instruments and Weak Identification in Generalized Method of Moments," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 20(4), pages 518-529, October.
    12. Joshua D. Angrist & Alan B. Krueger, 1993. "Split Sample Instrumental Variables," Working Papers 699, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Industrial Relations Section..
    13. Jeffrey R. Kling, 2006. "Incarceration Length, Employment, and Earnings," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(3), pages 863-876, June.
    14. repec:pri:indrel:dsp01zk51vg782 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Richard B. Freeman, 1991. "Crime and the Employment of Disadvantaged Youths," NBER Working Papers 3875, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Angrist, J D & Imbens, G W & Krueger, A B, 1999. "Jackknife Instrumental Variables Estimation," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 14(1), pages 57-67, Jan.-Feb..
    17. Freeman, Richard B., 1999. "The economics of crime," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 52, pages 3529-3571, Elsevier.
    18. Angrist, Joshua D. & Krueger, Alan B., 1999. "Empirical strategies in labor economics," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 23, pages 1277-1366, Elsevier.
    19. Lott, John R, Jr, 1992. "An Attempt at Measuring the Total Monetary Penalty from Drug Convictions: The Importance of an Individual's Reputation," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 21(1), pages 159-187, January.
    20. Angrist, Joshua D & Krueger, Alan B, 1995. "Split-Sample Instrumental Variables Estimates of the Return to Schooling," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 13(2), pages 225-235, April.
    21. Nagin, Daniel & Waldfogel, Joel, 1995. "The effects of criminality and conviction on the labor market status of young British offenders," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(1), pages 109-126, January.
    22. O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), 1999. "Handbook of Labor Economics," Handbook of Labor Economics, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 3, number 3.
    23. Angrist, Joshua D, 1990. "Lifetime Earnings and the Vietnam Era Draft Lottery: Evidence from Social Security Administrative Records: Errata," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(5), pages 1284-1286, December.
    24. Jeffrey R. Kling & David Weiman & Bruce Western, 2001. "The Labor Market Consequences of Incarceration," Working Papers 829, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Industrial Relations Section..
    25. Jeffrey R. Kling, 2004. "Incarceration Length, Employment, and Earnings," Working Papers 873, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Industrial Relations Section..
    26. Jinyong Hahn & Jerry Hausman, 2003. "Weak Instruments: Diagnosis and Cures in Empirical Econometrics," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(2), pages 118-125, May.
    27. Joel Waldfogel, 1994. "The Effect of Criminal Conviction on Income and the Trust "Reposed in the Workmen"," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 29(1), pages 62-81.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jeffrey R. Kling, 2004. "Incarceration Length, Employment, and Earnings," Working Papers 873, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Industrial Relations Section..
    2. Holzer, Harry J., 2007. "Collateral Costs: The Effects of Incarceration on the Employment and Earnings of Young Workers," IZA Discussion Papers 3118, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Bence Czafit & János Köllő, 2015. "Employment and wages before and after incarceration – evidence from Hungary," IZA Journal of European Labor Studies, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 4(1), pages 1-21, December.
    4. Joshua D. Angrist & Alan B. Krueger, 2001. "Instrumental Variables and the Search for Identification: From Supply and Demand to Natural Experiments," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 15(4), pages 69-85, Fall.
    5. Rosa Cho & Robert LaLonde, 2005. "The Impact of Incarceration in State Prison on the Employment Prospects of Women," Working Papers 0510, Harris School of Public Policy Studies, University of Chicago.
    6. Darolia, Rajeev & Mueser, Peter & Cronin, Jacob, 2021. "Labor market returns to a prison GED," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    7. Rasmus Landersø, 2015. "Does Incarceration Length Affect Labor Market Outcomes?," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 58(1), pages 205-234.
    8. Kenneth Avio, 1998. "The Economics of Prisons," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 6(2), pages 143-175, September.
    9. Richey, Jeremiah, 2012. "The Causal Effects of Criminal Convictions on Labor Market Outcomes in Young Men: A Nonparametric Bounds Analysis," MPRA Paper 56112, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Silver, Ian A. & D'Amato, Christopher & Wooldredge, John, 2021. "The cycle of reentry and reincarceration: Examining the influence on employment over a period of 18 years," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    11. Amanda Geller & Irwin Garfinkel & Bruce Western, 2006. "The Effects of Incarceration on Employment and Wages An Analysis of the Fragile Families Survey," Working Papers 932, Princeton University, School of Public and International Affairs, Center for Research on Child Wellbeing..
    12. Guilhem Bascle, 2008. "Controlling for endogeneity with instrumental variables in strategic management research," Post-Print hal-00576795, HAL.
    13. Manudeep Bhuller & Gordon B. Dahl & Katrine V. Løken & Magne Mogstad, 2020. "Incarceration, Recidivism, and Employment," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 128(4), pages 1269-1324.
    14. Angrist, J D & Imbens, G W & Krueger, A B, 1999. "Jackknife Instrumental Variables Estimation," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 14(1), pages 57-67, Jan.-Feb..
    15. Stijn Baert & Elsy Verhofstadt, 2015. "Labour market discrimination against former juvenile delinquents: evidence from a field experiment," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(11), pages 1061-1072, March.
    16. Richey, Jeremiah, 2015. "Shackled labor markets: Bounding the causal effects of criminal convictions in the U.S," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 17-24.
    17. Daniel A. Ackerberg & Paul J. Devereux, 2009. "Improved JIVE Estimators for Overidentified Linear Models with and without Heteroskedasticity," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 91(2), pages 351-362, May.
    18. Matthew C. Farrelly & William N. Evans & Edward Montgomery, 1999. "Do Workplace Smoking Bans Reduce Smoking?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(4), pages 728-747, September.
    19. Nagin, Daniel & Waldfogel, Joel, 1998. "The Effect of Conviction on Income Through the Life Cycle," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 25-40, March.
    20. Brian A. Jacob & Lars Lefgren, 2003. "Are Idle Hands the Devil's Workshop? Incapacitation, Concentration, and Juvenile Crime," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(5), pages 1560-1577, December.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • K42 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:12003. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.