Thread by @jenniferdoleac

High incarceration rates in the U.S. affect not only the individuals incarcerated, but their families and communities. Quantifying that effect is challenging, but important for cost-benefit analyses of incarceration policies.

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There is a long literature showing that incarceration reduces crime rates (primarily through an incapacitation effect), but it may have unintended negative impacts on those closest to the person incarcerated.

The incarceration of a parent could hurt kids by removing a source of emotional support & reducing HH income. On the other hand, removing parents who are engaged in criminal activity could be beneficial for children if those parents created instability or were poor role models.

The expected effect of incarceration on families is therefore ambiguous, and empirical analysis is necessary to determine the sign and magnitude of the effect in the real world.

This is easier said than done, however.

We know that incarceration of a parent is correlated with worse outcomes for kids, but it is unclear if that relationship is causal. Incarceration is typically correlated with other factors that could independently affect outcomes (e.g. poverty, low education).

In recent years there has been an explosion of new economics research focused on identifying the intergenerational & other spillover effects of incarceration.

These studies exploit natural experiments to measure causal effects, & have been enabled by improved data availability.

This thread will keep track of work in this area, for my and others’ reference.

Finlay & @NeumarkDN. 2010. "Is Marriage Always Better for Children? Evidence from Families Affected by Incarceration”

kfinlay.github.io/pdf/FinlayNeum…

Billings. 2018. "Parental Arrest and Incarceration: How Does it Impact the Children?”

papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…

Bhuller, et al. 2018. "Intergenerational Effects of Incarceration”

nber.org/papers/w24227.…

Dobbie, et al. 2018. "The Intergenerational Effects of Parental Incarceration”

drive.google.com/file/d/18WJH0J…

.@sambnorris, Pecenco, & Weaver. 2018. "The Effects of Parental and Sibling Incarceration: Evidence from Ohio”

docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid…

.@caroartc. 2018. "The Cost of Bad Parents: Evidence from the Effects of Incarceration on Children’s Education"

carolinaarteaga.com/job-market-pap…

.@smokeefe_. 2018. “Baby’s Gone: The Effects of Increased Sentencing Severity on Fertility and Family Formation”

dropbox.com/s/kjln6br7ord1…

Liu. 2018. "Incarceration of African American Men and the Impacts on Women and Children”

web.stanford.edu/~sitian/sitian…

Bhuller, et al. 2018. "Incarceration Spillovers in Criminal and Family Networks”

nber.org/papers/w24878.…