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Author: Wildeman, Christopher
Resulting in 2 citations.
1. Bacak, Valerio
Wildeman, Christopher
An Empirical Assessment of the "Healthy Prisoner Hypothesis"
Social Science and Medicine 138 (August 2015): 187-191.
Also: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953615003287
Cohort(s): NLSY97
Publisher: Elsevier
Keyword(s): Depression (see also CESD); Health/Health Status/SF-12 Scale; Incarceration/Jail; Injuries

Lower mortality among inmates, compared to the general population, is typically ascribed to access to health care during incarceration and the low risk of death due to homicide, accidents, and drug overdose. In this study, we test an alternative explanation based on selection of healthy individuals into jails and prisons--"the healthy prisoner hypothesis." According to this hypothesis, inmates have to be healthy to commit crimes and become incarcerated, which explains why they experience lower mortality than comparable segments of the general population. Using ten waves of data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, we compare individuals who become incarcerated the following year to those who do not on four measures of health--depression, self-rated health, functional limitations, and injury or illness requiring medical attention. Results from matched samples indicate that future inmates are hardly ever in significantly better health the year prior to their incarceration. These findings strongly suggest that the paradoxical mortality advantage of inmates is not due to health selection.
Bibliography Citation
Bacak, Valerio and Christopher Wildeman. "An Empirical Assessment of the "Healthy Prisoner Hypothesis"." Social Science and Medicine 138 (August 2015): 187-191.
2. Wildeman, Christopher
Parental Imprisonment, the Prison Boom, and the Concentration of Childhood Disadvantage
Demography 46,2 (May 2009): 265-280.
Also: http://www.springerlink.com/content/j0837x05331476t1/
Cohort(s): NLSY79, NLSY97
Publisher: Population Association of America
Keyword(s): Childhood; Disadvantaged, Economically; Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study; Incarceration/Jail; Life Course; Mothers, Incarceration; Racial Differences; Racial Studies; Sociability/Socialization/Social Interaction

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

Although much research has focused on how imprisonment transforms the life course of disadvantaged black men, researchers have paid little attention to how parental imprisonment alters the social experience of childhood. This article estimates the risk of parental imprisonment by age 14 for black and white children born in 1978 and 1990. This article also estimates the risk of parental imprisonment for children whose parents did not finish high school, finished high school only, or attended college. Results show the following: (1) 1 in 40 white children born in 1978 and 1 in 25 white children born in 1990 had a parent imprisoned; (2) 1 in 7 black children born in 1978 and 1 in 4 black children born in 1990 had a parent imprisoned; (3) inequality in the risk of parental imprisonment between white children of college-educated parents and all other children is growing; and (4) by age 14, 50.5% of black children born in 1990 to high school dropouts had a father imprisoned. These estimates, robustness checks, and extensions to longitudinal data indicate that parental imprisonment has emerged as a novel—and distinctively American—childhood risk that is concentrated among black children and children of low-education parents
Bibliography Citation
Wildeman, Christopher. "Parental Imprisonment, the Prison Boom, and the Concentration of Childhood Disadvantage." Demography 46,2 (May 2009): 265-280.