CRIME FALLS WHEN MORE YOUNG MEN ARE IN EDUCATION AFTER 16
A 1% increase in the number of young men who stay on at school after the age of 16 reduces crime committed by men by 1.7%. That is one of the many findings of research into the links between education and crime in the UK by Stephen Machin, Olivier Marieand Sunčica Vujić.
Their study, to be presented at the Royal Economic Society’s 2012 annual conference, also finds that more education significantly increases young people’s qualifications and their earnings later in life. This suggests that the fall in crime is caused not just by keeping young men off the streets and in the classroom – an ‘incapacitation effect’ – but also because these young men have better job opportunities.
A lack of job opportunities is thought to be one of the main reasons for last summer’s riots in the UK. These findings suggest that current plans to raise the school leaving age to 18 could have a significant effect on reducing crime and raising job opportunities for young people.
The authors comment:
‘Moves to increase educational participation can have an important effect in reducing participation in crime. This is true both in the short run through an incapacitation effect and in the long run through improvements of economic outcomes.
‘This large indirect social benefit of education on crime should be seriously taken into account when considering policies such as further increasing the minimum school leaving age or expanding higher education participation.’
The studylooks at the effect of having more educational opportunities for young people once they finish compulsory education at age 16. In the late 1980s and early 1990s more sixth-form colleges and apprenticeships became available, significantly raising the average levels of education across all sections of society, particularly those from poorer backgrounds who are more likely to turn to crime.
The research compares data on crime committed by the young people exposed to more education with those who were born just before. It finds that:
- A 1% increase in the proportion of male students reduces male crime by around 1.9%.
- Increasing the number of young men who stay on at school after 16 by 1% reduces crime committed by men by 1.7%.
- The effects are similar for women but less significant.
More…
This research considers the impact of education on crime. It presents new evidence of the causal relationship by studying what happened to crime in a period when the UK post-compulsory education system was very rapidly expanded.
This large expansion occurred in the late 1980s and early 1990s with the introduction of the GCSE examination system and significantly raised education levels across the whole education distribution. This considerably reduced the number of individuals with low education levels in birth cohorts exposed to the expansion.
The researchers’ approach is to think of these cohorts as a ‘treated’ set of individuals whose education was raised and then compare their education and crime outcomes with a ‘control’ set of cohorts who did not benefit from the expansion.
The empirical analysis reveals significant improvements in education levels for cohorts affected by the education expansion. Given the focus on crime, it is important to note that the education improvements also occurred at the bottom end of the education distribution, as this is where its impact is most likely to affect offending behaviour.
The researchers then consider what happened to crime for the treated cohorts relative to the control cohorts. They find show evidence that crime fell significantly for the same individuals exposed to the education expansion policy.
They present causal estimates by instrumenting increases in educational enrolment with the exogenous introduction of the GCSE for individuals in the affected cohorts. They estimate that a 1% increase in the proportion of male students reduces male crime by around 1.9% and a 1% increase in the proportion of men staying on at school after the compulsory school leaving age reduces male crime by around 1.7%.
The results for women go in the same direction but they are smaller and less precisely determined. For young men, the researchers also find that education causally reduces both property and violent crimes.
Finally, they look at mechanisms underpinning the crime-education relationship and present evidence that the education boost from expansion also significantly affected other productivity-related economic variables (such as qualification attainment and hourly/weekly earnings).
They interpret this as showing that keeping people in the education system (that is, the ‘incapacitation’ effect of youths being busy at school and thus less likely to have time to commit crimes) although important in reducing offending, is not the sole driver of the results, because the education boost is also associated with better, productivity-raising, economic outcomes.
The main policy implication from these findings is that political moves to increase educational participation can have an important effect on reducing criminal participation. This is true both in the short run through an incapacitation effect and in the long run through improvements of economic outcomes.
These large indirect social benefits of education on crime should therefore be seriously taken into account when considering policies such as further increasing the minimum school leaving age or those likely to expand (or contract) higher education participation.
ENDS
Contact:
Dr Olivier Marie
+31 652 633 575
Email: o.marie@maastrichtuniversity