Lost boys? Secondary education and crime

Kristiina Huttunen, Tuomas Pekkarinen, Roope Uusitalo and Hanna Virtanen

Journal of Public Economics, 2023, vol. 218, issue C

Abstract: We study the effect of secondary education on criminal behavior of young men in Finland. We exploit admission cut-offs in over-subscribed programs and estimate the effect of gaining access to a) any secondary school vs no access, b) general vs vocational school, and c) selective vs less selective general school. Our results show that admission to any secondary school has a sizeable negative effect on the propensity to commit crime. There are no effects at the other two margins. The negative effects at the extensive margin are largest in the years following school admission and result in a reduction of the probability of ever committing crime rather than simply delaying the onset of crime. Our results suggest that keeping youth at school at a critical age has effects that last beyond years where effects on enrollment are observed.

Keywords: Crime; School admission; Secondary education (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I2 K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047272722002067
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:pubeco:v:218:y:2023:i:c:s0047272722002067

DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2022.104804

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Public Economics is currently edited by R. Boadway and J. Poterba

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