The long-run and heterogeneous impact of educational policy on crime

Yu Bai, Yanjun Li, Xinyan Liu and Ryuichi Tanaka

Journal of Comparative Economics, 2026, vol. 54, issue 1, 295-311

Abstract: This study investigates the heterogeneous long-term effects of compulsory education on property crime by exploiting the staggered implementation of China’s Compulsory Schooling Law (CSL) as a natural experiment. Using a novel panel dataset of criminal court verdicts from the China Judgments Online platform, we find that CSL significantly increased educational attainment and reduced property crime rates in affected cohorts. This reduction is concentrated in low-skill theft crimes, with no significant effect on high-skill fraud crimes, suggesting that basic education primarily deters entry-level criminal activity. These results suggest that displacement effects may play a role, highlighting the importance of considering the differential reach of education policies, such as basic compulsory schooling versus higher education expansions, when designing crime prevention strategies.

Keywords: Compulsory schooling laws; Education; Crime; Court documents; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 K15 K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S014759672500085X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:jcecon:v:54:y:2026:i:1:p:295-311

DOI: 10.1016/j.jce.2025.11.003

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Comparative Economics is currently edited by D. Berkowitz and G. Roland

More articles in Journal of Comparative Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().