Estimating Causal Effects of Paternal Incarceration on Infant Pregnancy Outcomes in New York City

• In Event: 4155 - Section on Crime, Law, and Deviance Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 7. Incarceration & Inequality

Abstract

Research has consistently found paternal incarceration—a common and unequally distributed experience in the United States—to be negatively associated with an array of outcomes, with consequences for the children of the (formerly) incarcerated that reverberate across the life course. However, the unequal distribution of incarceration across the population and challenges of measurement and identification in existing data on child wellbeing and criminal justice system involvement in the United States make it difficult to ascertain the degree to which these associations reflect associated disadvantages or reflect the role of incarceration as an engine of inequality. In this study, we leverage variation in the timing of paternal incarceration around a birth to estimate the causal effect of paternal incarceration on key infant pregnancy outcomes using linked administrative data on all children born in 2011-2014 in New York City and an analytical strategy that leverages variation in the timing of paternal incarceration relative to a child’s birth.

Authors

• Youngmin Yi, Cornell University

• Christopher Wildeman, Cornell University

• Joseph Kennedy, New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, Office of Vital Statistics