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  4. September 2021
  5. The Effects of Parental and Sibling Incarceration: Evidence from Ohio

American Economic Review

ISSN 0002-8282 (Print) | ISSN 1944-7981 (Online)

The Effects of Parental and Sibling Incarceration: Evidence from Ohio

  • Samuel Norris
  • Matthew Pecenco
  • Jeffrey Weaver
American Economic Review
vol. 111, no. 9, September 2021
(pp. 2926–63)
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Abstract

Every year, millions of Americans experience the incarceration of a family member. Using 30 years of administrative data from Ohio and exploiting differing incarceration propensities of randomly assigned judges, this paper provides the first quasi-experimental estimates of the effects of parental and sibling incarceration in the United States. Parental incarceration has beneficial effects on some important outcomes for children, reducing their likelihood of incarceration by 4.9 percentage points and improving their adult neighborhood quality. While estimates on academic performance and teen parenthood are imprecise, we reject large positive or negative effects. Sibling incarceration leads to similar reductions in criminal activity.

Citation

Norris, Samuel, Matthew Pecenco, and Jeffrey Weaver. 2021. "The Effects of Parental and Sibling Incarceration: Evidence from Ohio." American Economic Review, 111 (9): 2926–63. DOI: 10.1257/aer.20190415

Additional Materials

JEL Classification

  • H76 State and Local Government: Other Expenditure Categories
  • J13 Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth
  • K42 Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law