The Effect of Education on Criminal Convictions and Incarceration: Causal Evidence from Micro-data

This article studies the causal effect of educational attainment on conviction and incarceration using Sweden's compulsory schooling reform as an instrument for years of schooling and a 70% sample from Sweden's Multigenerational Register matched with more than 30 years of administrative crime records. 

We find a significant negative effect of schooling on male convictions and incarceration; one additional year of schooling decreases the likelihood of conviction by 6.7% and incarceration by 15.5%. 

Though OLS estimates for females are of a similar magnitude to those for males, we find no evidence of a significant causal effect for women.

Below:  Age Profile of Crimes in Sweden, 1973–2007

Below:  Share Treated and Share with Only Seven Years of Schooling in Each Birth Cohort in Our Baseline Sample

Below:  Share Convicted in Our Baseline Sample by Birth Cohort, Age and Gender

Below:  Trends in Years of Schooling for Early, Mid and Late Reforming Municipalities Note. Based on individuals in our estimation sample who were randomly drawn from the population register (i.e. excludes matched on siblings, parents and children).

Below:  Trends in Cohort Growth for Early, Mid and Late Reforming Municipalities Notes. Based on individuals in our estimation sample who were randomly drawn from the population register (i.e. excludes matched on siblings, parents and children).

Full article at:  http://goo.gl/cyBBJN

By:  Randi Hjalmarsson^1, Helena Holmlund²and Matthew J. Lindquist³

1 University of Gothenburg and Queen Mary University of London

2 Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy (IFAU)

3 Swedish Institute for Social Research, Stockholm University

^*Corresponding author: Randi Hjalmarsson, Department of Economics, University of Gothenburg, P.O. Box 640, SE 405 30 Gothenburg. Email: randi.hjalmarsson@economics.gu.se,r.hjalmarsson@qmul.ac.uk.

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