Guns, Drugs and Juvenile Crime: Evidence from a Panel of Siblings and Twins / H. Naci Mocan, Erdal Tekin.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Mocan, H. Naci.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Tekin, Erdal.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w9824.

NBER working paper series no. w9824

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Other Title:

Guns, Drugs and Juvenile Crime

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2003.

Summary:

Using a nationally-representative panel data set of U.S. high school students (AddHealth data) that contains a relatively large sample of siblings and twins, the paper investigates the impacts of gun availability at home and individual drug use on robbery, burglary, theft and damaging property for juveniles. Using a variety of fixed-effects models that exploit variations over time, the results show that gun availability at home increases the propensity to committing robbery, burglary and theft by about two percentage points for juveniles but has no impact on damaging property. It is unlikely that gun availability is merely a measure of the unobserved home environment because gun availability does not influence other risky or bad behaviors of juveniles. The results show that having access to guns increases the probability of being cut or stabbed by someone and of someone pulling a knife or gun on the juvenile. Estimates obtained from models that exploit variations over time and between siblings and twins indicate that the median impact of cocaine use on the propensity to commit various types of crimes is 23 percentage points. The impact of using inhalants or other drugs is an increase in the propensity to commit crime by 14 and 18 percentage points, respectively.

Notes:

Print version record

July 2003.