Larrikin youth: can education cut crime?

CEP discussion paper (CEPDP1456) by Tony Beatton and Dipa Sarkar (Queensland University of Technology), Michael Kidd (RMIT University) and Stephen Machin (director of CEP) published in CentrePiece Volume 22 Number 1 (Spring 2017)

Abstract

This paper reports new evidence on the causal link between education and male youth crime using individual level state-wide administrative data for Queensland, Australia. Enactment of the Earning or Learning education reform of 2006, with a mandatory increase in minimum school leaving age, is used to identify a causal impact of schooling on male youth crime.

The richness of the matched (across agency) individual level panel data enables the analysis to shed significant light on the extent to which the causal impact reflects incapacitation, or whether more schooling acts to reduce crime after youths have left compulsory schooling.

The empirical analysis uncovers a significant incapacitation effect, as remaining in school for longer reduces crime whilst in school, but also a sizeable crime reducing impact of education for young men in their late teens and early twenties. We also carry out analysis by major crime type and differentiate between single and multiple offending behaviour.

Crime reduction effects are concentrated in property crime and single crime incidence, rather than altering the behaviour of the recalcitrant persistent offender.

JEL Classification: I2, K42

The article in CentrePiece summarises ‘Larrikin Youth: New Evidence on Crime and Schooling’ by Tony Beatton, Michael Kidd, Stephen Machin and Dipa Sarkar, CEP Discussion Paper No. 1456

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