Property Crime: Just a Risky Occupation? Exploring the Issue with a Birth Cohort

Jenny Williams

No 1998-14, Adelaide Economics Working Papers from Adelaide University, School of Economics

Abstract: This paper investigates the relationship between property crimes and work using data from the 1958 Philadelphia Birth Cohort Study. These data provide a unique opportunity to investigate the crime as work model, containing information on earnings and arrests for a sample representative of young men is US urban areas. We find that working significantly decreases the probabilty of committing crime, as does educational attainment. However, higher wages are not associated with a lower probability of committing crime. Measures of social influence during childhood and adulthodd have a significant impact on adult criminality. These findings suggest that the legitimate social interactions associated with work have a greater effect on criminal behaviour than does the higher income associated with employment and educational attainment.

Keywords: crimes; education; social influence (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C23 C25 J24 K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 21 pages
Date: 1998
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:adl:wpaper:1998-14

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