Working Paper Series,
IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy

Abstract: We study the impact on criminal activity from a large scale Swedish reform of vocational upper secondary education, extending programs from two to three years and adding more general theoretical content. The reform directly concerns age groups where criminal activity is high and students who are highly overrepresented among criminal offenders. The nature of the reform and the rich administrative data allow us to shed light on several behavioral mechanisms. Our results show that the prolonged and more general education lead to a reduction in property crime, but no significant decrease in violent crime. The effect is mainly concentrated to the third year after enrollment, which suggests that being in school reduces the opportunities and/or inclinations to commit crime.

Keywords: Education; delinquency

JEL-codes: K42

49 pages, June 22, 2015

Full text files

wp2015-15-Education-and-criminal-behavior.pdf  

Download statistics

Fortchoming as

Olof Åslund, Hans Grönqvist, Caroline Hall and Jonas Vlachos, 'Education and criminal behavior: insights from an expansion of upper secondary school', Labour Economics

• IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy
• Ordering Working Papers
• Home page for this series

Questions (including download problems) about the papers in this series should be directed to Ali Ghooloo ()
Report other problems with accessing this service to Sune Karlsson ().

RePEc:hhs:ifauwp:2015_015This page generated on 2024-09-13 22:15:20.