Are Gangs an Alternative to Legitimate Employment? Investigating the Impact of Labor Market Effects on Gang Affiliation

Richard Seals ()

No 200711, Working Papers from Middle Tennessee State University, Department of Economics and Finance

Abstract: This paper adds to the literature estimates of local labor market effects on gang participation. I use data from the 1997 cohort of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY97) to model the probability of gang involvement. The effect of the local unemployment rate is statistically significant and positive, across a wide-range of model specifications. However, robustness checks reveal gang participation of individuals less than sixteen years-of-age (the legal minimum age for most jobs) is not responsive to the local unemployment rate. Gang participation among individuals with lower ASVAB scores is more sensitive to the local unemployment rate.

Keywords: gang participation; NLSY; intelligence; unemployment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J00 J19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-reg, nep-soc and nep-ure
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mts:wpaper:200711

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