TY - JOUR AU - Lochner, Lance TI - Education, Work, and Crime: A Human Capital Approach JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 10478 PY - 2004 Y2 - May 2004 DO - 10.3386/w10478 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w10478 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w10478.pdf N1 - Author contact info: Lance Lochner Department of Economics Faculty of Social Science Western University 1151 Richmond Street, North London, ON N6A 5C2 CANADA Tel: 519/661-2111 ext. 85281 Fax: 519/661-3666 E-Mail: llochner@uwo.ca AB - 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. ER -