Christian Dustmann (UCL) will present:
"The Boys are Back in Town: The Effect of Child's Gender on Youth Crime"
at 3pm on Wednesday, April 29, 2015. Room TBD

Please sign up for a meeting, lunch, or dinner at:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Dna4iYajOqEeHQS1zAUCROqLNIeH_gdgwwMfGiZ1oJ0/edit?usp=sharing

Abstract

Using a research design based on the randomness of the gender of the first born child, we address two questions: First, do life course events such as marriage and child bearing lead to termination in criminal activity (desistance), and if so, are these effects permanent. Second, does a reduction in criminal activity of one individual affect the criminal behavior of other young men in the neighborhood. Our research design is based on child's gender as an exogenous event that manipulates a focal individual's criminal behavior. We find a significant reduction in conviction probabilities of young fathers for crimes committed in the first years after childbirth if the child is a son rather than a daughter. We find similar reductions in criminal convictions of other young men who live in the immediate neighborhood of the father at childbirth, which we interpret as evidence for spillovers. We corroborate these findings using victimization data, with a significant reduction in victimization rates in the same neighborhoods for the first five years after childbirth.