Crime scars: recessions and the making of career criminals
Recessions lead to short-term job loss, lower levels of happiness and decreasing income levels. There is growing evidence that workers who first join the labour market during economic downturns suffer from poor job matches that have a sustained detrimental effect on their wages and career progression. This paper uses a range of US and UK data to document a more disturbing long-run effect of recessions: young people who leave school in the midst of recessions are significantly more likely to lead a life of crime than those graduating into a buoyant labour market. These effects are long lasting and substantial.
Brian Bell, Anna Bindler and Stephen Machin
1 July 2018
Review of Economics and Statistics 100(3), pp.392-404, 2018
This Journal article is published under the centre's Community Wellbeing programme.
This publication comes under the following theme: Causes of crime, Crime