Incarceration, Employment and Earnings: Dynamics and Differences

Grey Gordon, John Jones, Urvi Neelakantan and Kartik Athreya

Review of Economic Dynamics, 2023, vol. 51, 677-697

Abstract: We study the dynamics of incarceration, employment, and earnings. Our hidden Markov model distinguishes between first-time and repeat incarceration, between persistent and transitory nonemployment and earnings risks, and accounts for nonresponse bias. We estimate the model via maximum likelihood using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, accounting for the large differences in incarceration rates by race, education level, and gender. First-time incarceration is associated with 33% (50%) lower expected lifetime earnings and 6 (10) fewer years of employment for Black (White) men with a high school degree. Among less-educated men, differences in incarceration and nonemployment can explain around half the Black-White lifetime earnings gap. (Copyright: Elsevier)

Keywords: earnings dynamics; incarceration; racial inequality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C23 D31 J15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.red.2023.06.007
Access to full texts is restricted to ScienceDirect subscribers and institutional members. See https://www.sciencedirect.com/ for details.

Related works:
Software Item: Code and data files for "Incarceration, Employment and Earnings: Dynamics and Differences" (2023)
Working Paper: Online Appendix to "Incarceration, Employment and Earnings: Dynamics and Differences" (2023)
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:red:issued:21-319

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.economic ... ription-information/

DOI: 10.1016/j.red.2023.06.007

Access Statistics for this article

Review of Economic Dynamics is currently edited by Loukas Karabarbounis

More articles in Review of Economic Dynamics from Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Christian Zimmermann ().