EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

The Crime Reducing Effect of Education

Stephen Machin, Olivier Marie and Sunčica Vujić ()

CEP Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Performance, LSE

Abstract: In this paper, we present evidence on empirical connections between crime and education, using various data sources from Britain. A robust finding is that criminal activity is negatively associated with higher levels of education. However, it is essential to ensure that the direction of causation flows from education to crime. Therefore, we identify the effect of education on participation in criminal activity using changes in compulsory school leaving age laws over time to account for the endogeneity of education. In this causal approach, for property crimes, the negative crime-education relationship remains strong and significant. The implications of these findings are unambiguous and clear. They show that improving education can yield significant social benefits and can be a key policy tool in the drive to reduce crime.

Keywords: Crime; education; offenders (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I2 K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-hrm, nep-law and nep-ure
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/dp0979.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The Crime Reducing Effect of Education (2011)
Working Paper: The crime reducing effect of education (2010) Downloads
Working Paper: The Crime Reducing Effect of Education (2010) Downloads
Working Paper: The crime reducing effect of education (2010) Downloads
Working Paper: The crime reducing effect of education (2010) Downloads
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:cep:cepdps:dp0979

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEP Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Performance, LSE
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().

 
Page updated 2025-01-21
Handle: RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp0979