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Author: Mustard, David B.
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Gould, Eric D. Weinberg, Bruce A. Mustard, David B. |
Crime Rates and Local Labor Market Opportunities in the United States: 1979-1997 Review of Economics and Statistics 84,1 (February 2002): 45-61. Also: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3211738 Cohort(s): NLSY79 Publisher: Harvard University Press Keyword(s): Crime; Employment, Youth; Labor Force Participation; Male Sample; Simultaneity; Unemployment Rate; Unemployment, Youth; Wages; Wages, Young Men Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher. The labor market prospects of young, unskilled men fell dramatically in the 1980s and improved in the 1990s. Crime rates show a reverse pattern: increasing during the 1980s and failing in the 1990s. Because young, unskilled men commit most crime, this paper seeks to establish a causal relationship between the two trends. Previous work on the relationship between labor markets and crime focused mainly on the relationship between the unemployment rate and crime, and found inconclusive results. In contrast, this paper examines the impact of both wages and unemployment on crime, and uses instrumental variables to establish causality. We conclude that both wages and unemployment are significantly related to crime, but that wages played a larger role in the crime trends over the last few decades. These results are robust to the inclusion of deterrence variables, controls for simultaneity, and controlling for individual and family characteristics. |
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Bibliography Citation
Gould, Eric D., Bruce A. Weinberg and David B. Mustard. "Crime Rates and Local Labor Market Opportunities in the United States: 1979-1997." Review of Economics and Statistics 84,1 (February 2002): 45-61.
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