Family Formation and Crime

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Massenkoff, Maxim; Rose, Evan k.
• 署名单位: United States Department of Defense; United States Navy; Naval Postgraduate School; University of Chicago; National Bureau of Economic Research
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-APPLIED ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7782
• DOI: 10.1257/app.20220751
• 发表日期: 2024
• 页码: 444-483
• 关键词: UNITED-STATES; paternity establishment; teenage childbearing; Father involvement; marriage; pregnancy; fertility; CONSEQUENCES; incentives; desistance

摘要

We perform a large-scale analysis of the impact of family formation on crime. For mothers, criminal arrests drop precipitously in the first few months of pregnancy, decreasing 50 percent overall. Men show a sustained 20 percent decline in crime that begins around pregnancy, although arrests for domestic violence spike at birth. A separate design using parents of stillborn children to estimate counterfactual arrest rates reinforces the main findings. Marriage, in contrast, is not associated with any sudden changes and marks the completion of a gradual 50 percent decline in arrests for both men and women.