TY  - JOUR
AU  - Nagin,Daniel
AU  - Waldfogel,Joel
TI  - The Effect of Convicton on Income Through the Life Cycle
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 4551
PY  - 1993
Y2  - November 1993
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w4551
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w4551.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Daniel S. Nagin
Heinz College
Carnegie Mellon University
Pgh.,PA 15213
E-Mail: dn03+@andrew.cmu.edu

Joel Waldfogel
Frederick R. Kappel Chair in Applied Economics
3-177 Carlson School of Management
University of Minnesota
321 19th Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55455
Tel: 612/626-7128
E-Mail: jwaldfog@umn.edu
AB  - Existing studies of the impact of conviction on income and employment do not consider life cycle issues.  We postulate that conviction reduces access to career jobs offering stable, long-term employment.  Instead, conviction relegates offenders to spot market jobs, which may have higher pay at the outset of the career but do not offer stable employment or rapidly rising wages.  Thus, first-time conviction may increase the wages of young workers while decreasing the wages of older workers.  We test our theory with data on federal offenders and find that first-time conviction has a positive and significant effect on income for offenders under age 25 and an increasingly negative and significant impact for offenders over age 30.  These results imply that the present value of income lost as a result of conviction varies over the life cycle, reaching a maximum in the middle of the career.  We find that the gains sought by these offenders follow similar profiles, suggesting that prospective offenders are deterred by the possibility of lost future income. Because the discounted loss in future income facing young offenders may be small, our results may provide part of an explanation of youth crime.
ER  -