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Title: Effect of Employer Access to Criminal History Data on the Labor Market Outcomes of Ex-Offenders and Non-Offenders
Resulting in 1 citation.
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Finlay, Keith |
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Effect of Employer Access to Criminal History Data on the Labor Market Outcomes of Ex-Offenders and Non-Offenders NBER Working Papers No. 13935, National Bureau of Economic Research, 2008. Also: hhttp://www.nber.org/papers/w13935.pdf Cohort(s): NLSY97 Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): Discrimination; Employment; Human Capital; Incarceration/Jail; Job Search; Labor Market Outcomes; Self-Reporting; Statistics; Wage Determination; Wage Levels Since 1997, states have begun to make criminal history records publicly available over the Internet. This paper exploits this previously unexamined variation to identify the effect of expanded employer access to criminal history data on the labor market outcomes of ex-offenders and non-offenders. Employers express a strong aversion to hiring ex-offenders, but there is likely asymmetric information about criminal records. Wider availability of criminal history records should adversely affect the labor market outcomes of ex-offenders. A model of statistical discrimination also predicts that non-offenders from groups with high rates of criminal offense should have improved labor market outcomes when criminal history records become more accessible. This paper tests these hypotheses with criminal and labor market histories from the 1997 cohort of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. I find evidence that labor market outcomes are worse for ex-offenders once state criminal history records become available over the Internet, and somewhat weaker evidence that outcomes are better for non-offenders from highly offending groups. Results for ex-offenders demonstrate the presence of imperfect information about criminal records by employers. The non-offender results are consistent with statistical discrimination by employers. Estimates may be confounded by a short sample period and ongoing human capital investments, but the research design provides a unique setting for testing theories of statistical discrimination. |
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Bibliography Citation
Finlay, Keith. "Effect of Employer Access to Criminal History Data on the Labor Market Outcomes of Ex-Offenders and Non-Offenders." NBER Working Papers No. 13935, National Bureau of Economic Research, 2008. |