Crime, Punishment and the Measurement of Poverty in the United States, 1979-1997

Kuan Xu and Ian Irvine (irvinei@vax2.concordia.ca)

No 333, LIS Working papers from LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg

Abstract: The rate of incarceration has increased dramatically in the U.S. since 1980. We explore the implications of this increased incarceration on national poverty measurement using micro data for the period 19791997. We make use of an as-yet unexplored data set on prisoner earnings, in conjunction with the Current Population Survey to compute earnings of the whole population. It is found that the traditional measurement of poverty, which omits this increased share of the population that has become institutionalized, understates the true degree of poverty in the nineteen nineties to a significant degree. This underestimation has increased during the time period of study. Furthermore, it is the depth of poverty associated with the higher incarceration rate, rather than the higher rate of incarceration alone that has had the greatest impact upon poverty. These results stand in marked contrast to western European economies and Canada.

Pages: 46 pages
Date: 2002-11
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.lisdatacenter.org/wps/liswps/333.pdf (application/pdf)

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:lis:liswps:333

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LIS Working papers from LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Piotr Paradowski (publication@lisdatacenter.org).