The Incarceration Penalty and Black-White Economic Inequality: The Case of Baltimore

Lauren Russell, Jorge Zumaeta, Aaron Colston and William Darity

AEA Papers and Proceedings, 2023, vol. 113, 456-61

Abstract: This paper investigates income and wealth gaps by household incarceration history within and across racial groups using the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition. We study this in the context of 2017 Baltimore. We find that households exposed to incarceration have lower levels of income and wealth and that these differences are largest for White households. Additionally, we find that Black households without incarceration exposure fare no better in household income than White households with exposure but have higher levels of wealth (driven by lower debt levels). These results highlight the importance of studying the relationship between the criminal legal system and economic inequality.

JEL-codes: D12 D31 D63 J15 K42 R23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/pandp.20231132 (application/pdf)
https://doi.org/10.3886/E189823V1 (text/html)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/pandp.20231132.ds (application/zip)
Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

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:aea:apandp:v:113:y:2023:p:456-61

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.aeaweb.org/subscribe.html

DOI: 10.1257/pandp.20231132

Access Statistics for this article

AEA Papers and Proceedings is currently edited by William Johnson and Kelly Markel

More articles in AEA Papers and Proceedings from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert ().