Does Eligibility for Tertiary Education Affect Crime Rates? Quasi-Experimental Evidence

Martin Nordin

No 2014:14, Working Papers from Lund University, Department of Economics

Abstract: This paper estimates a tertiary eligibility effect on crime for Sweden. The idea is that investment in higher education is a way of escaping youth inactivity and idleness, and, since youth inactivity is known to trigger crime, the self-incapacitation effect of higher education decreases crime rates. However, to invest in higher education, the individual has to meet the tertiary eligibility requirements in upper-secondary school. Tertiary eligibility may therefore affect crime rates. Evidence of an exogenous grade inflation in the eligibility rate is used to identify the tertiary eligibility effect. With the introduction of a goal-related grading system, the share with tertiary eligibility increased by more than 6 percentage points. Accordingly, during the period with grade inflation in the eligibility rate, crime rates fell, but, when the period of grade inflation was ended, the effect of tertiary eligibility on crime disappeared as well. Hence, when youth have the opportunity to invest in higher education, and thus escape unemployment or inactivity, their propensity to commit crime decreases.

Keywords: crime; education; tertiary eligibility (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J20 K14 K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 33 pages
Date: 2014-04-29
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-law and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://project.nek.lu.se/publications/workpap/papers/WP14_14.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:lunewp:2014_014

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Lund University, Department of Economics School of Economics and Management, Box 7080, S-22007 Lund, Sweden. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Iker Arregui Alegria ().