Education, Work, and Crime: A Human Capital Approach

Lance Lochner

No 10478, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This paper develops a model of crime in which human capital increases the opportunity cost of crime from foregone work and expected costs associated with incarceration. Older, more intelligent, and more educated adults should commit fewer street (unskilled) crimes. White collar crimes decline less (or increase) with age and education. Predictions for age-crime and education-crime relationships receive broad empirical support in self-report data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and arrest data from the Uniform Crime Reports. The effects of education, training, and wage subsidies, as well as enforcement policies on criminal behavior are discussed.

JEL-codes: J2 K4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-law and nep-ure
Note: LS CH
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (281)

Published as Lochner, Lance. "Education, Work And Crime: A Human Capital Approach," International Economic Review, 2004, v45(3,Aug), 811-843.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w10478.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: EDUCATION, WORK, AND CRIME: A HUMAN CAPITAL APPROACH (2004)
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:nbr:nberwo:10478

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w10478

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().