Market Wages and Youth Crime / Jeff Grogger.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Grogger, Jeff.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w5983.

NBER working paper series no. w5983

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 1997.

Summary:

Youth crime is widespread. To study the effect of market wages on youth crime, I analyze a time-allocation model in which consumers face parametric wages and diminishing marginal returns to crime. Under these assumptions, an individual who works will commit crime if the returns to the first hour of crime exceed his market wage. This decision rule imposes considerable structure on the econometric model, which I estimate using data from the National Longitudinal Survey Youth Cohort. The empirical model provides estimates of the determinants of criminal returns and of the wage responsiveness of criminal participation. Young men's behavior appears to be very responsive to price incentives. My estimates suggest that falling real wages may have been an important determinant of rising youth crime over the past two decades. Moreover, wages explain an important component of the racial differential in criminal participation, and they largely explain the age distribution of crime.

Notes:

Print version record

March 1997.