The Socioeconomic Status of Black Males: The Increasing Importance of Incarceration

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The Socioeconomic Status of Black Males The
Increasing Importance of Incarceration

• Steven Raphael
• Goldman School of Public Policy
• University of California, Berkeley
• December, 2003

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Incarceration Trends 1970 to 2000

• Point-in-time institutionalization trends from
  the U.S Census
• Estimating the proportion with prior prison
  experience

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Estimating the Proportion with Prior Prison
Experience

• BJS estimates
• In addition to the 1.3 million current prisoners,
  an additional 4.3 million have served a prison
  term in the past
• Current and former inmates account for 4.9
  percent of the 2001 adult male population.
• 2.6 percent of non-Hispanic white males (1.4
  percent in 1974)
• 16.6 percent of non-Hispanic black males (8.7
  percent in 1974)
• 7.7 percent of Hispanic males (2.3 percent in
  1974)

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The Effects of Incarceration on Future Labor
Market Prospects

• To what extent does prison interrupt ones
  potential work career?
• Does having been in prison stigmatize
  ex-offenders?

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Increasing incarceration rates and the decline in
black employment-to-population ratios among the
non-institutionalized

• Avenues by which the proportion institutionalized
  may be related to the employment rate among the
  non-institutionalized
• Proportion institutionalized is likely to be
  positively correlated with the proportion
  non-institutionalized with criminal history
  records
• Employers may statistically discriminate against
  applicants from demographic groups with high
  institutionalization rates

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Testing the importance of this partial
correlations

• Using the 1970, 1980, 1990, and 2000 one percent
  PUMS, I estimate the proportion of
  non-institutionalized men that are employed and
  the proportion of all men that are
  institutionalized by age/education/race/ and
  year.
• Regress proportion employed (among
  non-institutionalized) on the proportion
  institutionalized
• Assess whether inter-cell variation in the
  proportion institutionalized explains any of the
  widening in the black-white employment rate
  differential.

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