Youth Depression and Future Criminal Behavior

D. Mark Anderson, Resul Cesur () and Erdal Tekin

No 18656, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: While the contemporaneous association between mental health problems and criminal behavior has been explored in the literature, the long-term consequences of such problems, depression in particular, have received much less attention. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we examine the effect of depression during adolescence on the probability of engaging in a number of criminal behaviors later in life. In our analysis, we control for a rich set of individual, family, and neighborhood level factors to account for conditions that may be correlated with both childhood depression and adult criminality. One novelty in our approach is the estimation of school and sibling fixed effects models to account for unobserved heterogeneity at the neighborhood and family levels. Furthermore, we exploit the longitudinal nature of our data set to account for baseline differences in criminal behavior. We find little evidence that adolescent depression predicts the likelihood of engaging in violent crime or the selling of illicit drugs. However, our empirical estimates show that adolescents who suffer from depression face an increased probability of engaging in property crime. Our estimates imply that the lower-bound economic cost of property crime associated with adolescent depression is about 219 million dollars annually.

JEL-codes: I10 K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ure
Note: CH EH
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Published as D. Mark Anderson & Resul Cesur & Erdal Tekin, 2015. "Youth Depression And Future Criminal Behavior," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 53(1), pages 294-317, 01.

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Related works:
Journal Article: YOUTH DEPRESSION AND FUTURE CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR (2015)
Working Paper: Youth Depression and Future Criminal Behavior (2012)
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