Incarceration and Wage Mobility Revisited: Jail versus Prison Incarceration

• In Event: Comparative Risks of Jail and Prison Incarceration and Their Consequences

Abstract

This paper is an extension of the seminal study by Western (2002) and explores whether jail and prison incarceration have different or similar long-term effects on wage mobility. In a model using person fixed effects, Western (2002) found that wages were 15% lower among formerly incarcerated individuals, and that wages grow 30% slower after incarceration. We estimate differences by race, ethnicity, and gender and adjust for the selectivity of wage earners using a control function with accumulated work status. We also test alternative estimators largely unavailable in 2002, such as fixed slopes for age to purge the model of age-graded heterogeneity in the wage profiles. The consequences of our findings for aggregate levels of racial wage inequality in the United States are discussed.

Author

• Robert Apel, Rutgers University-Newark