Education and Criminal Behavior: Insights from an Expansion of Upper Secondary School

Olof Åslund, Hans Grönqvist, Caroline Hall and Jonas Vlachos ()

No 9374, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We study the impact on criminal activity from a large scale Swedish reform of vocational upper secondary education, extending programs from two to three years and adding more general theoretical content. The reform directly concerns age groups where criminal activity is high and students who are highly overrepresented among criminal offenders. The nature of the reform and the rich administrative data allow us to shed light on several behavioral mechanisms. Our results show that the prolonged and more general education lead to a reduction in property crime, but no significant decrease in violent crime. The effect is mainly concentrated to the third year after enrollment, which suggests that being in school reduces the opportunities and/or inclinations to commit crime.

Keywords: education; delinquency (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 56 pages
Date: 2015-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-law and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Education and criminal behavior: Insights from an expansion of upper secondary school (2018)
Working Paper: Education and criminal behavior: insights from an expansion of upper secondary school (2015)
Working Paper: Education and Criminal Behavior: Insights from an Expansion of Upper Secondary School (2015)
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