The Minimum Wage, EITC, and Criminal Recidivism

Amanda Agan and Michael Makowsky

No 25116, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: For recently released prisoners, the minimum wage and the availability of state Earned Income Tax Credits (EITCs) can influence both their ability to find employment and their potential legal wages relative to illegal sources of income, in turn affecting the probability they return to prison. Using administrative prison release records from nearly six million offenders released between 2000 and 2014, we use a difference-in-differences strategy to identify the effect of over two hundred state and federal minimum wage increases, as well as 21 state EITC programs, on recidivism. We find that the average minimum wage increase of $0.50 reduces the probability that men and women return to prison within 1 year by 2.8%. This implies that on average the effect of higher wages, drawing at least some released prisoners into the legal labor market, dominates any reduced employment in this population due to the minimum wage. These reductions in returns to incarcerations are observed for the potentially revenue generating crime categories of property and drug crimes; prison reentry for violent crimes are unchanged, supporting our framing that minimum wages affect crime that serves as a source of income. The availability of state EITCs also reduces recidivism, but only for women.

JEL-codes: J08 J2 K31 K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-law and nep-lma
Note: LS
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (24)

Published as Amanda Y. Agan & Michael D. Makowsky, 2023. "The Minimum Wage, EITC, and Criminal Recidivism," Journal of Human Resources, vol 58(5), pages 1712-1751.

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Working Paper: The Minimum Wage, EITC, and Criminal Recidivism (2018)
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