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The Absorbing Status of Incarceration and its Relationship with Wealth Accumulation
Abstract
Objectives This study extends our knowledge on the negative effects of incarceration to the accumulation of wealth by examining whether, how, and how much incarceration affects home ownership and net worth. It also investigates how these outcomes vary with the time since a person was incarcerated and the number of incarceration periods, along with addressing potential mechanisms behind this relationship. Methods I apply hybrid mixed effects models that disaggregate within- and between person variation to investigate incarceration’s relationship with home ownership and net worth, using National Longitudinal Study of Youth data from 1985 to 2008. I also incorporate a set of mediation models in order to test for indirect effects of incarceration on wealth through earnings, health, and family formation. Results My results show that incarceration limits wealth accumulation. Compared to never-incarcerated persons, ex-offenders are less likely to own their homes by an average of 5 percentage points, and their probability of home ownership decreases by an additional 28 percentage points after incarceration. Ex-offenders’ net worth also decreases by an average of $42,000 in the years after incarceration. Conclusions When combined with previous research on incarceration, my findings show that incarceration acts as an absorbing status, potentially leading to the accumulation of disadvantage. Although incarceration’s negative effects on wealth accumulation were partially mediated by its relationship with earnings and family formation, incarceration directly affected home ownership and net worth. In most cases, former inmates began with flatter wealth trajectories and experienced additional losses after incarceration.
... First, using data from the 1997 cohort of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY97), we ask whether criminal justice contact is linked to access to credit and indebtedness-an important but understudied aspect of socioeconomic inequality in the twenty-first century (Dwyer 2018). Criminal justice contact, particularly incarceration, contributes to labor market inequalities (Wakefield and Uggen 2010), and scholars have recently turned their attention to outcomes such as net worth, assets, and debts (Dwyer, DeMarco, and Haynie 2019;Maroto 2015;Maroto and Sykes 2019;Sykes and Maroto 2016;Turney and Schneider 2016;Zaw, Hamilton, and Darity 2016). We expand this research by examining the relationship between criminal justice contact and unsecured debt that is accrued from credit cards, banks, and other businesses. ...
... More recently, scholars have examined how criminal justice contact is implicated in wealth inequality in young adulthood, including outcomes such as net worth, homeownership, and owning a bank account (Maroto 2015;Maroto and Sykes 2019;Remster and Kramer 2018;Schneider and Turney 2015;Sykes and Maroto 2016;Turney and Schneider 2016). Young adulthood is a critical time period for socioeconomic attainment and mobility (Furstenberg 2008) when debt accumulates rapidly (Houle 2014a;Yilmazer and Devaney 2005). ...
... Finally, criminal justice contact could prohibit access to credit because any resulting discrimination and socioeconomic disadvantage could damage an individual's credit standing. Contact at all levels is detrimental to employment prospects (Pager 2007;Uggen et al. 2014), and declines in net worth and homeownership (Maroto 2015;Turney and Schneider 2016) could impede an individual's ability to develop a credit history. ...
Contact with the American criminal justice system is associated with socioeconomic disadvantage and financial insecurity, but little research has explored the link between criminal justice contact and indebtedness. In this study, we ask whether contact in young adulthood is associated with access to credit and unsecured debt burdens. We also focus on state-level policies that operate alongside official punishments and restrict citizenship and societal participation among the justice-involved (termed hidden sentences), and ask whether such policies moderate the association between criminal justice contact and indebtedness. We find that criminal justice contact, especially incarceration, is associated with reduced access to unsecured credit and greater absolute and relative debt burdens. These associations are strongest for individuals residing in states with more onerous hidden sentence regimes. We argue that indebtedness is a key socioeconomic consequence of criminal justice contact and that hidden sentences may exacerbate these consequences.
... We are aware of only two studies that specifically examined the effects of arrests on young adult asset and debt attainment. First, Maroto (2015) used regression analyses and portions of the data that we use here to assess whether having ever been arrested by age 25 predicted various measures of age 25 wealth accumulation. She found that a previous arrest decreased financial assets by 45% and debt by 35%, though it did not decrease total net worth. ...
... Still, several questions remain unanswered. First, Maroto (2015) examined arrest histories up to age 25, so her findings may speak more to the effects of "youthful" arrests-those occurring up to early young adulthood-than to the lasting effects of juvenile arrests specifically. And Maroto and Sykes' (2019) findings speak to adult arrests. ...
... Thus, we do not yet know the implications of juvenile arrests for these outcomes. Second, Maroto (2015) was unable to conduct causal analyses of the impact of arrests on asset and debt accumulation, so it is possible that her findings overstated the presence or size of that impact. And third, the youthful arrest analyses of Maroto's (2015) study did not include mediation analyses, so they did not reveal why any association between youthful arrests and later economic attainment might occur. ...
Objectives
We tested the impact of juvenile arrest on asset accumulation, debt accumulation, and net worth from ages 20–30. We also examined whether indicators of family formation, school and work attainment, and subsequent justice system contacts explained any effects.
Methods
We used longitudinal data on 7916 respondents from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 Cohort. Our treatment variable was a dichotomous indicator of whether respondents were arrested as juveniles. Our focal outcomes were combined measures of the values of 10 types of assets, 6 types of debt, and net worth (assets minus debt) at ages 20, 25, and 30. We used propensity score methods to create matched groups of respondents who were and were not arrested as juveniles, and we compared these groups on the outcomes using multilevel growth curve analyses.
Results
Arrested juveniles went on to have lower assets, debts, and net worth during young adulthood compared to non-arrested juveniles. These differences were most pronounced at age 30. The differences were largely explained by educational attainment, weeks worked, and income.
Conclusions
The fact that juvenile arrest predicted early adult economic attainment net of 43 matching covariates provides strong evidence that these effects are not merely artifacts of selection. The additional finding that education, employment, and income explain much of the juvenile arrest effect highlights several potential areas of intervention for protecting young arrestees’ later net worth.
... Recently, researchers have also begun to focus on incarceration's consequences for wealth, an important but often overlooked dimension of economic inequality and financial insecurity. Studies using different datasets indicate that incarceration leads to declines in homeownership and net worth (Maroto 2015;Zaw, Hamilton, and Darity 2016), limits wealth for other household members (Sykes and Maroto 2016), and impedes ownership of bank accounts and vehicles (Turney and Schneider 2016). Using data from the 1997 cohort of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY97), we expand on previous work, which has largely focused solely on incarceration among baby boomers, by investigating how different types of criminal justice contact influence multiple components of wealth among this younger cohort. ...
... It limits access to and advancements in education, employment, and political spheres Wakefield and Uggen 2010) and creates short-and long-term health problems for former prisoners (Massoglia 2008a(Massoglia , 2008bSykes and Piquero 2009), which may compound existing economic inequalities. For people with criminal records, incarceration operates as a criminal credential (Pager 2007) or an absorbing status (Maroto 2015), defined as an indefinite and perpetual state of disadvantage that compounds and solidifies hardships and inequalities, from which upward mobility is unlikely the longer the person remains in this steady-state. The absorbing status of incarceration is instrumental in fostering social exclusion (Foster and Hagan 2015). ...
... Previous research indicates that the negative consequences of incarceration also extend to wealth among older adults, particularly those within the baby boomer cohort. Maroto (2015) found that, in addition to starting with lower levels of wealth, the likelihood of homeownership declined by an additional 28 percentage points and an ex-offender's net worth decreased by an average of $42,000 after incarceration among baby boomers in NLSY79 data. A further investigation of the indirect effects of incarceration showed that incarceration coincided with income losses, which also limited ex-offenders' abilities to build wealth (Maroto 2015). ...
Previous research indicates that incarceration leads to declines in rates of homeownership and net worth, especially among baby boomers, but questions remain as to how other types of criminal justice system contact affect wealth outcomes during the transition to adulthood. Using data from the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, we investigate how arrests, convictions, and incarceration influence net worth, financial assets, and debt among young adults. We find that most contact with the criminal justice system limited the ability of young adults to accumulate wealth between the ages of 25 and 30, an especially important time for building life-cycle wealth. Arrests were associated with asset and debt declines of 52–53 percent, and incarceration led to net worth and asset declines of 34 and 76 percent, respectively. These direct effects were also bolstered by the indirect effects of these variables through their relationship with marriage and earnings, especially in the case of incarceration. This study draws attention to how criminal justice system contact affects early adult wealth, thereby setting the stage to influence a host of life course dynamics for individuals and their families.
... LFOs can compound economic strain for ex-offenders, as the intersection between criminal record and poverty is well documented (Evans, 2014;Reitz, 2015;Ruback, 2015). Many offenders come from areas of disadvantage and typically return home to the same or comparable situations of limited economic and employment opportunities, potentially making payment of LFOs more difficult (Harding, Wyse, Dobson, & Morenoff, 2014;Maroto, 2015) and adding to general strain (Agnew, 1992). Research suggests that only about half of ex-offenders are able to pay economic sanctions in their entirety (Ruback, 2015;Ruback, Ruth, & Shaffer, 2005). ...
... Decreased opportunities for housing and upward social mobility among formerly incarcerated populations are also common (Harding et al., 2014;Maroto, 2015;Roman & Travis, 2004), and prior research indicates LFOs can further magnify reintegration challenges (Reitz, 2015). Harris and colleagues (2010) found that LFOs damaged credit scores among a population of released offenders, which is likely to dampen both housing and employment prospects where credit checks are common (Bannon et al., 2010;Diller et al., 2009;McLean & Thompson, 2007). ...
... LFOs can also act as a barrier to improving social circumstances. Research documents limited upward movement for ex-offenders (Harding et al., 2014;Maroto, 2015), and LFOs further compound the ability to meet positively valued goals (Agnew, 1992). Ex-offenders who default on payments can be restricted from public assistance, such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and Supplemental Security Income (Bannon et al., 2010). ...
Growing fiscal concerns for criminal justice agencies and punitive ideological shifts have increased the financial consequences of a conviction. The growth in legal financial obligations (LFOs), such as fees, fines, and restitution resultant from conviction has important implications for offender reentry, particularly offender reintegration and opportunities for social advancement. Utilizing data culled from in-depth qualitative interviews with a sample of persons under correctional supervision, the current research documents the nature and prevalence of LFOs for an offending population and explores how they affect post-conviction experiences. The results indicate a majority of ex-offenders experience some form of LFO including fines, supervision costs, and child-support-related fees. Overall, LFOs diminished positive opportunities for offenders by compounding precarious financial states, limiting opportunities for upward social movement, and weakening positive cognitive change. As research consistently identifies primarily adverse consequences from LFOs, policy implications are explored to mitigate negative individual and social outcomes for offenders.
... Such a record acts as a barrier to employment, thereby lowering earnings (Apel and Sweeten 2010;Pager 2003). Furthermore, the criminal ''credential'' (Pager 2007) associated with incarceration impedes wealth accumulation through stigmatization, poor credit access and lack of access to supportive social institutions (Brayne 2014;Maroto 2014;Wildeman 2014;Goffman 2009). With 1 out of 35 adults in the USA having been incarcerated previously, the effect on wealth outcomes is a major social concern. ...
... Indeed, Schneider and Turney (2015) found that higher incarceration rates depress black homeownership rates and widen black-white disparities in homeownership. Prior research has shown that previous incarceration is associated with substantially lower levels of wealth (Maroto 2014), estimating that respondents who had previously been incarcerated had an average of $42,000 less wealth (in 2010 dollars) than their peers who never had experienced incarceration. Although Maroto (2014) controlled for race in her model, the analysis did not examine differential effects due to race. ...
... Prior research has shown that previous incarceration is associated with substantially lower levels of wealth (Maroto 2014), estimating that respondents who had previously been incarcerated had an average of $42,000 less wealth (in 2010 dollars) than their peers who never had experienced incarceration. Although Maroto (2014) controlled for race in her model, the analysis did not examine differential effects due to race. In this paper, we explicitly look at racial wealth differences between those previously incarcerated and never incarcerated. ...
Using the 1979 cohort of the National Longitudinal Study of Youth to explore the interwoven links between race, wealth and incarceration, this study examines the data on race and wealth status before and after incarceration. Data indicate that although higher levels of wealth were associated with lower rates of incarceration, the likelihood of future incarceration still was higher for blacks at every level of wealth compared to the white likelihood, as well as the Hispanic likelihood, which fell below the white likelihood for some levels of wealth. Further, we find that racial wealth gaps existed among those who would be incarcerated in the future and also among the previously incarcerated.
... These data often consist of large nationally representative samples, are longitudinal in nature, and provide multiple measures of employment outcomes. Research using survey data has consistently found that incarcerated individuals have worse employment prospects than non-incarcerated individuals (Apel & Sweeten, 2010;Geller, Garfinkel, & Western, 2006;Jung, 2015;Maroto, 2015;Western, 2002;Zaw, Hamilton, & Darity, 2016). Across the existing research, estimates indicate that incarcerated individuals' probability of employment is about 10-20% lower than non-incarcerated individuals and their wage earnings are around 5-30% lower (Apel & Sweeten, 2010;Geller et al., 2006;Jung, 2015;Maroto, 2015;Western, 2002;Zaw et al., 2016). ...
... Research using survey data has consistently found that incarcerated individuals have worse employment prospects than non-incarcerated individuals (Apel & Sweeten, 2010;Geller, Garfinkel, & Western, 2006;Jung, 2015;Maroto, 2015;Western, 2002;Zaw, Hamilton, & Darity, 2016). Across the existing research, estimates indicate that incarcerated individuals' probability of employment is about 10-20% lower than non-incarcerated individuals and their wage earnings are around 5-30% lower (Apel & Sweeten, 2010;Geller et al., 2006;Jung, 2015;Maroto, 2015;Western, 2002;Zaw et al., 2016). ...
Objectives
Although reentry is commonly perceived as a singular event, evidence suggests that when formerly incarcerated individuals reenter society they have a heightened likelihood of returning to prison. This heightened likelihood could generate a reentry-reincarceration cycle, where individuals reenter society, become reincarcerated due to situational circumstances, and have to go through reentry again. This cycle is likely to continue until the barriers to reentry are addressed. One known barrier to reentry is the inability to gain and maintain legal employment. While research suggests that incarceration diminishes future employment opportunities, scholars have yet to evaluate the between-individual and within-individual effects of the reentry-reincarceration cycle on future employment outcomes.
Methods
Using the NLSY97 birth cohort, the current study evaluated the influence of time spent incarcerated (an approximation of the reentry-reincarceration cycle) on future employment outcomes over an 18-year period. Specifically, two cross-lagged panel models were estimated to examine the between-individual effects of the number of months incarcerated on employment and the number of weeks employed, while two lagged latent growth models were estimated to examine the within-individual effects.
Results
In addition to suggesting that the reentry-reincarceration cycle exists, the findings illustrated that the reentry-reincarceration cycle influences between-individual differences on employment outcomes and within-individual changes in employment outcomes over time.
Conclusion
The reentry-reincarceration cycle contributes to the difficulties formerly incarcerated individuals have finding and maintaining employment during reentry. Efforts should be made to diminish the likelihood of individuals falling into the reentry-reincarceration cycle, as well as increase employment opportunities for formerly incarcerated individuals.
... Although researchers have shown that incarceration influences a variety of economic outcomes for former offenders and those around them, research on the relationship between incarceration and wealth accumulation is relatively new. The few studies on this topic indicate that incarceration is associated with decreased rates of homeownership and net worth for former offenders (Maroto 2015;Zaw, Hamilton, and Darity 2016); it is a particularly salient factor in explaining black-white disparities in homeownership (Schneider and Turney 2015). Additional research points to increasing debt for former offenders through the courts' use of heavy pre-and post-conviction fines and fees that many individuals simply cannot afford to pay (Harris, Evans, andBeckett 2010, 2011). ...
... Using NLSY79 data and fixed-effects models to help account for selection, Michelle Maroto shows that the likelihood of homeownership declined by an additional 28 percentage points after incarceration, and an ex-offender's net worth decreased by an average of $42,000 after incarceration. These declines compounded already low levels of wealth and coincided with additional labor market consequences that also limited ex-offenders' abilities to earn income (Maroto 2015). Using state-level data from 1985 to 2005, Daniel Schneider and Kristin Turney (2015) also find that higher statelevel incarceration rates are associated with decreased black homeownership rates, which leads to larger black-white wealth disparities. ...
Despite the strong relationship between the rise in mass incarceration over the last forty years and racial inequality in employment and wages, few studies have examined the long-term consequences and spillover effects of criminal justice contact on the black-white wealth gap in the United States. In this paper, we investigate the mechanisms whereby the local and distal incarceration of a family member affects household wealth, focusing on wealth disparities by race and education. Using data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), the Current Population Survey, and the Survey of Inmates in State and Federal Correctional Facilities and Local Jails, we apply fixed-effects and probit models to estimate how a family member’s incarceration influences household assets and debt over panel waves. We find that having an incarcerated family member reduced household assets by 64.3 percent and debt by 85.1 percent after we adjusted for the underrepresentation of institutionalization in SIPP data. We also discuss these findings in the context of broader racial disparities in wealth and employment. Our findings demonstrate how contemporary patterns of mass incarceration contribute to the maintenance of social inequality in wealth and form barriers to economic security for other household members.
... Scholarship on mass incarceration's consequences is often introduced with reference to racial inequality (Haskins & Lee 2016). Such scholarship has identified an array of mechanisms by which mass incarceration appears to contribute to racial stratification, particularly through a longstanding line of inquiry on the disproportionate impact of incarceration-related constraints on Black men's workforce participation, income, and wealth (Maroto 2015, Maroto & Sykes 2020, Western 2002, Zaw et al. 2016). Yet most such research frames these phenomena as an unfortunate artifact of racially disproportionate criminal legal system contact, rather than situating the impetus and functioning of the criminal legal system within a broader theory of structural racial inequality. ...
A rich empirical literature documents the consequences of mass incarceration for the wealth, health, and safety of Black Americans. Yet it often frames such consequences as a regrettable artifact of racially disproportionate criminal legal system contact, rather than situating the impetus and functioning of the criminal legal system in the wider context of White political and economic domination. Revisiting a quarter century of mass incarceration research through a stratification economics lens, we highlight how mass incarceration shapes Black–White competition for education, employment, and financial resources and contributes to Black–White disparities in well-being. Highlighting persistent research gaps, we propose a research agenda to better understand how mass incarceration contributes to systematic White advantage. To address mass incarceration's consequences and transform the conditions of White political and economic domination under which it arose, we call for legislative and judicial intervention to remedy White hyper-enfranchisement and reparations to eliminate the Black–White wealth gap.
... Second, incarceration is a stressor that can proliferate across people and generations, and thus not only harms the well-being of the person directly exposed to incarceration but also negatively impacts the well-being of adult family A c c e p t e d M a n u s c r i p t members (Turney, 2021), children (Wildeman et al., 2018), and communities (Kajeepeta et al., 2020). Finally, the primary stressor of incarceration can lead to secondary stressors such as economic hardship (Harper et al., 2021;Maroto, 2015), fractured family relationships and social ties (Rengifo & DeWitt, 2019;Turney & Halpern-Meekin, 2021;Turney & Schneider, 2016), stigma (Feingold, 2021), and loss of social status (Schnittker & Bacak, 2013). Emerging research proposes that the stress-related harms of incarceration can contribute to a weathering process that inhibits healthy aging and exacerbates cognitive decline (Testa et al., 2023). ...
Objective
This study aimed to investigate the cognitive functioning of formerly incarcerated older adults compared to their never-incarcerated counterparts, focusing on immediate and delayed verbal recall.
Methods
Data are from 2,003 respondents who participated in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health – Parent Study (AHPS) (ages 47-82; mean age 62). AHPS participants were administered word recall memory exercises to the parent respondent from the Rey Auditory-Verbal administered Learning Test, including (a) 90-second (immediate or short-term verbal memory), (b) 60-second recall tests (delayed or long-term verbal memory), and (c) combined word recall on the 90- and 60-second tests
Results
Adjusting for control variables, respondents who reported prior incarceration had a lower rate of verbal recall on the combined word recall (Incidence risk ratio [IRR] = .915, 95% Confidence Interval [CI] = .840, .997) and immediate word recall (IRR = .902, 95% CI = .817, .996). When restricting the sample to respondents over age 60, prior incarceration was associated with lower combined word recall (IRR = .847, 95% CI = .752, .954), immediate word recall (IRR = .857, 95% CI = .762, .963), and delayed word recall (IRR = .834, 95% CI = .713, .974).
Discussion
This study underscores the adverse impact of prior incarceration on cognitive functioning in the older adult population, emphasizing the need for targeted interventions and support for formerly incarcerated older adults. The results reinforce the importance of addressing the long-term consequences of incarceration, especially as individuals enter older adulthood.
... Financial strain from unmanageable debt is common among poor people of color [13] which is the same population most heavily burdened by the criminal legal system [14]. Low wealth (assets minus debt) increases the likelihood of incarceration and disproportionally affects Black people [15], and incarceration negatively impacts future wealth creation [16]. For example, a recent review showed that 50-90% of people leaving incarceration owe debt [17]. ...
Financial debt and incarceration are both independently associated with poor health, but there is limited research on the association between debt and health for those leaving incarceration. This exploratory study surveyed 75 people with a chronic health condition and recent incarceration to examine debt burden, financial well-being, and possible associations with self-reported health. Eighty-four percent of participants owed at least one debt, with non-legal debt being more common than legal debt. High financial stress was associated with poor self-reported health and the number of debts owed. Owing specific forms of debt was associated with poor health or high financial stress. Non-legal financial debt is common after incarceration, and related stress is associated with poor self-reported health. Future research is needed in larger populations in different geographical areas to further investigate the relationship and the impact debt may have on post-release poor health outcomes. Policy initiatives to address debt in the post-release population may improve health.
... Our inquiry is also motivated by, and related to, a literature that considers how incarceration risks can impact black-white wealth inequality (Zaw, Hamilton, and Darity, 2016), life-cycle wealth accumulation (Maroto, 2015;Maroto and Sykes, 2020), asset ownership (Bryan, 2020;Siennick and Widdowson, 2020), and retirement wealth (Chiteji, 2020). Individual wealth outcomes reflect, at least in part, some valuation of future relative to current consumption conditional upon the stochastic discount factor, which conditions the value of future consumption. ...
Introduction
Historically, black Americans have been disproportionately at the bottom quantiles of the wealth distribution. As the choice of making any investment that can increase future wealth requires equating an asset's price to its return adjusted by a stochastic discount factor, this article considers if black‐white differences in the risk of incarceration, which can reduce the intertemporal marginal rate of substitution in consumption, matters for black‐white differences in wealth.
Methods
With repeated cross‐section data from the U.S. General Social Survey, we estimate the parameters of ordinal regression treatment specifications of individual wealth levels to measure the effects of incarceration risk on wealth.
Results
Parameter estimates reveal that individual wealth levels vary inversely with incarceration risk. As black Americans have relatively higher incarceration risks, this suggests that at least part of the black‐white wealth gap can be explained by racial differences in incarceration risk.
Conclusion
Criminal justice reforms that reduce black‐white disparities in incarceration rates could also reduce black‐white disparities in wealth.
... Although many scholars have discussed the regressive interaction of monetary sanctions and public assistance, the motivation of this article is to move the conversation away from recognizing monetary sanctions as a collateral consequence of the penal system, and toward the rec-ognition that, when financial sanctions are applied to the poor, particularly those who are the recipients of public assistance, these sanctions act as an exponent of punishment by depriving individuals and communities of social safety net provisions (see also Harris 2016). Recent scholarship has helped clarify the struggles of reentry (Western 2018), echoing qualitative (Macleod 2009) and quantitative (Pager 2003;Pager and Lincoln 2005;Petitt and Lyons 2009) findings that a criminal record is an "absorbing status" (Maroto 2015) that profoundly reduces labor access and wealth generation (Sykes and Maroto 2016;Maroto and Sykes 2020). Our work contributes to scholarship on the feedback effects of poverty and LFOs by specifying how money is, often unwittingly, transferred from assistance programs to penal institutions in the imposition of monetary sanctions. ...
Research on punishment and inequality finds that people with criminal records routinely avoid systems of surveillance. Yet scholarship on monetary sanctions shows that many people experiencing poverty with criminal legal system debt are also involved with the state in other domains of social life. How can these literatures be resolved? In this article, we posit that past research can be reconciled through a focus on financial double-dealing—disparate and contradictory economic entanglements that redistribute welfare resources from individuals to the criminal legal system and its institutional affiliates. Drawing on nationally representative survey data, as well as unique data collected on people with monetary sanctions in seven states, we find that individuals and families receiving cash and noncash public assistance are significantly more likely to owe monetary sanctions and are less likely to pay them. We discuss the implications of multiple-system involvement for ongoing surveillance.
... Incarceration among individuals from already marginalized groups exacerbates economic inequality (Schneider & Turney, 2015). Maroto (2015) conducted a study on the negative effects of incarceration in the context of wealth. Using the National Longitudinal Study of Youth data (from 1985 to 2008), the researcher explored the relationship between incarceration, home ownership, and net worth. ...
Rates of incarceration in the United States have grown dramatically over the past 50 years. These high rates of incarceration call for mental health and relational therapy to incarcerated individuals and their families. In conducting a literature review on incarceration, several topics emerged: mental illness, racial and ethnic disparity, and recidivism. When studying incarceration, mental illness is a necessary topic of inclusion due to high prevalence of mentally ill incarcerated individuals. When exploring issues related to incarceration, it is important to discuss diverse disparities to be able to put the individuals into context of their social location as well as address how contextual factors impact incarceration. The purpose of this article is to highlight the systemic, relational issues within incarcerated settings and then to display how treating mental illness and relational concerns allows for a healthier integration back into the family system. Clinical implications and future directions are also provided.
... Racial disparities are stark: African Americans make up less than 13% of the U.S. population but comprise over a third of all the people in prison (Western & Wildeman, 2009). Incarceration contributes to deepening existing social and racial inequalities as people who have been incarcerated and their families face serious financial hardship in the form of housing and food insecurity, unemployment, exclusion from social programs after release, and a decreased ability to build or maintain wealth (Huebner, 2005;Maroto, 2015;Massoglia & Remster, 2019;Schwartz-Soicher, Geller, & Garfinkel, 2011;Turney & Schneider, 2016;Uggen, Manza, & Thompson, 2006;Western, Braga, Davis, & Sirois, 2015;Zaw, Hamilton, & Darity, 2016). ...
People involved with the criminal justice system in the United States are disproportionately low-income and indebted. The experience of incarceration intensifies financial hardship, including through worsening debt. Little is known about how people who are incarcerated and their families are impacted by debt and how it affects their reentry experience. We conducted a scoping review to identify what is known about the debt burden on those who have been incarcerated and their families and how this impacts their lives. We searched 14 data bases from 1990 to 2019 for all original research addressing financial debt held by those incarcerated in the United States, and screened articles for relevance and extracted data from pertinent studies. These 31 studies selected for inclusion showed that this population is heavily burdened by debt that was accumulated in three general categories: debt directly from criminal justice involvement such as LFOs, preexisting debt that compounded during incarceration, and debts accrued during reentry for everyday survival. Debt was generally shown to have a negative effect on financial well-being, reentry, family structure, and mental health. Debts from LFOs and child support is very common among the justice-involved population and are largely unpayable. Other forms of debt likely to burden this population remain largely understudied. Extensive reform is necessary to lessen the burden of debt on the criminal justice population in order to improve reentry outcomes and quality of life.
... It also increases household financial burdens associated with livelihood, such as childcare expenses (Braman 2004;Grinstead et al. 2001). Family members, especially mothers and partners, bear excess financial burdensfrom posting bail, to paying legal fines and fees, to visitation and related costs (Comfort 2007;Harris, Evans, andBeckett 2010, 2011;Harris 2016;Maroto 2015). Financial obligations associated with criminal convictions, transferred to family members, can fuel a cycle of debt and obligation that spans across generations (Harris 2016). ...
Despite two decades of declining crime rates, the United States continues to incarcerate a historically and comparatively large segment of the population. Moreover, incarceration and other forms of criminal justice contact ranging from police stops to community supervision are disproportionately concentrated among African American and Latino men. Mass incarceration, and other ways in which the criminal justice system infiltrates the lives of families, has critical implications for inequality. Differential rates of incarceration damage the social and emotional development of children whose parents are in custody or under community supervision. The removal through incarceration of a large segment of earners reinforces existing income and wealth disparities. Patterns of incarceration and felony convictions have devastating effects on the level of voting, political engagement, and overall trust in the legal system within communities. Incarceration also has damaging effects on the health of families and communities. In short, the costs of mass incarceration are not simply collateral consequences for individuals but are borne collectively, most notably by African Americans living in acutely disadvantaged communities that experience high levels of policing and surveillance. In this article, we review racial and ethnic differences in exposure to the criminal justice system and its collective consequences.
... Race differences in marital histories may also contribute to the racial wealth gap (Addo & Lichter 2013, Campbell & Kaufman 2006, although endogeneity concerns persist. Incarceration is associated with reduced wealth (Maroto 2015), suggesting that racial disparities in incarceration experience may contribute to the racial wealth gap. Compared with the research on homeownership and portfolio choice, these literatures are much thinner and additional analyses are needed to clarify the role of marriage and incarceration in generating racial wealth disparities. ...
Research on wealth inequality and accumulation and the data upon which it relies have expanded substantially in the twenty-first century. Although the field has experienced rapid growth, conceptual and methodological challenges remain. We begin by discussing two major unresolved methodological concerns facing wealth research: how to address challenges to causal inference posed by wealth’s cumulative nature and how to operationalize net worth, given its highly skewed distribution. Next, we provide an overview of data sources available for wealth research. To underscore the need for continued empirical attention to net worth, we review trends in wealth levels and inequality and evaluate wealth’s distinctiveness as an indicator of social stratification. We then review recent empirical evidence on the effects of wealth on other social outcomes, as well as research on the determinants of wealth. We close with a list of promising avenues for future research on wealth, its causes, and its consequences. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Sociology Volume 43 is July 30, 2017. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
Background
Formerly incarcerated individuals (FIIs) encounter difficulties with covering the cost of dental and medical care, adhering to medication regimens, and receiving fair treatment from health care providers. Yet, no published research has examined modifiable pathways to increase FIIs' health literacy (HL), which is essential for addressing the health needs of this vulnerable population.
Objective
The aim of this article is to examine neighborhood characteristics (neighborhood deprivation, racial and economic polarization, and residential segregation) and public assistance program enrollment as structural determinants of limited health literacy (LHL) among FIIs.
Methods
Using a socioecological framework, we analyzed a subsample of 578 FIIs from the 2023 Survey of Racism and Public Health, an online cross-sectional survey spanning U.S. Department of Health & Human Services Regions 1, 2, and 3. HL was assessed using the Brief Health Literacy Screen. Logistic regression models estimated unadjusted and adjusted associations of LHL with neighborhood characteristics and public assistance program enrollment. Adjusted models controlled for age, race and ethnicity, gender identity, educational attainment, marital and employment status, number of children, chronic health conditions, and incarceration length.
Key Results
The 578 FIIs had an average age of 46, with 42% having LHL. We observed a statistically significant association between public assistance program enrollment and LHL (unadjusted odds ratio [OR] = 2.72, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.87, 4.01; adjusted OR = 2.50, 95% CI: 1.62, 3.88). We found no statistically significant associations of LHL with neighborhood deprivation, racial and economic polarization, and residential segregation.
Conclusions
Our findings suggest that there may be an opportunity to develop tailored interventions for increasing HL among FIIs through public assistance programs. Dissemination of HL resources among this marginalized group can improve their self-management of chronic diseases. This is of paramount importance because FIIs must simultaneously navigate other challenges after incarceration (e.g., unstable housing). [ HLRP: Health Literacy Research and Practice . 2025;9(1):e8–e18. ]
Qualitative research has documented mothers’ critical role in supporting adult children during and after incarceration. Yet, the implications of incarceration for mothers have been relatively unexplored. Wealth research has also largely overlooked the influence of adult children on parental wealth. Using linked mother–child data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79) and the NLSY79 Child and Young Adult study, we investigate whether a child's incarceration influences mothers’ wealth and whether accounting for child incarceration history helps explain the racial wealth gap. We use an event-study analysis and fixed-effects models to assess the evidence that children's incarceration affects three forms of wealth: financial assets, homeownership, and home equity. We find significant relationships between child incarceration and maternal wealth, but the importance of current versus prior child incarceration depends on the type of wealth considered. We also find that child incarceration is much more detrimental in dollar terms for White women than for Black or Hispanic women, but the financial asset penalty associated with child incarceration is larger in percentage terms for Black women than for White women.
Having a child incarcerated can take a toll on the physical, psychological, and financial well-being of mothers. These factors could, in turn, affect behavioral outcomes of mothers, such as alcohol use patterns. Some mothers might drink to cope with the experience of having a child incarcerated, but others may reduce alcohol use for various reasons. Given these uncertainties, the authors examined the association between child incarceration and maternal alcohol consumption (i.e., any use, frequency, quantity, and binge drinking). Eight waves of nationally representative data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 cohort were linked with the National Longitudinal Survey Children and Young Adults ( n = 3,837 mothers; 678 had children incarcerated). Multilevel generalized linear regression models showed that compared with mothers with no child incarceration, mothers of ever-incarcerated children were more likely to binge drink and consume more drinks when drinking (between-person effects). In contrast, following child incarceration, women consumed alcohol less frequently and were less likely to binge drink than they were prior to experiencing child incarceration (within-person effects). Additional research should focus on mechanisms that explain these opposing associations to identify protective factors and institutional supports for women whose children have been incarcerated.
Studies have examined the racial disparities in household characteristics, homeownership, and familial transfer as primary drivers of the Black–White wealth gap in the United States. This study assesses the importance of stock-linked assets in generating wealth inequality. As financial assets become a growing component of household portfolios, the Black–White wealth gap is increasingly associated with the racial disparity in stock-linked assets. Using data from the Survey of Consumer Finances and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, this study shows that the contribution of stock-linked assets to the Black–White wealth gap has expanded in both absolute and relative terms, surpassing those of homeownership and business equity. Furthermore, a substantial disparity in financial wealth exists even for otherwise similar Black and White households. Although the disparity is larger among those with more economic resources, a gap remains among those with less. Lastly, our analysis shows that the combination of lower ownership levels and lower returns on financial wealth among Black households could account for a quarter of the Black–White wealth accumulation gap, net of differences in current net worth and household characteristics. Our findings suggest that considering financial assets is critical for understanding contemporary racial wealth inequality.
Prior consumer research has tended to focus on identity-related stigma management of individuals toward their own stigma. However, little is known about the consumption-related identity work that stigmatized individuals undertake to discharge the courtesy stigma attached to close associates such as family members. Courtesy stigma refers to the discredit directed toward people who are closely associated with a stigmatized individual or group. Drawing on interview, ethnographic, and netnographic data on China’s ‘Leftover Women,’ our research analyzes the personal and, more centrally, the social identity work related consumption counternarratives that these women construct—through combinations of specific kinds of consumption and gift-giving practices—to counteract family and courtesy stigma. Counternarratives are the resistance stories that people tell and live to either implicitly or explicitly challenge the dominant cultural narrative. The findings of our investigation help to build an enhanced understanding of how stigmatized individuals act as consumers in the market and via digital channels to tackle the family identity challenges of courtesy stigma that have not been explored in extant studies of consumer stigma identity work.
Social exclusion of those with criminal justice experience increasingly includes a financial component, but the structure of disadvantage in credit and debt remains unclear. We develop a model of financial disadvantage in debt holding during the transition to adulthood among justice-involved groups. We study cumulative criminal justice contact and debt holding by age 30 using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97). The NLSY97 cohort transitioned to adulthood during an era of historically high criminal justice contact, with many experiencing arrests, convictions, and incarceration. We develop a distinct measurement approach to cumulative criminal justice contact by age 30 that captures variation between young adults in the severity of justice encounters in the early life course. We conceptualize financial disadvantage as a lower likelihood of holding debt that facilitates property and attainment investments and a higher likelihood of holding higher cost debts used for consumption or emergencies. We find that those with the most punitive criminal justice contact evidence the most disadvantageous form of debt holding, potentially exacerbating social exclusion. We consider the implications of the accumulation of financial disadvantage for our understanding of criminal justice contact as a life-course process.
Objective
The authors investigate whether criminal justice contact is associated with residential transitions—both home‐leaving and home‐returning—among contemporary young adults.
Background
More young adults live with their parents today than live independently. Despite the prevalence of criminal justice contact among young Americans, and research suggesting that such contact can reshape the life course, it is unknown whether the criminal justice system is associated with patterns of home‐leaving and home‐returning.
Method
Data are drawn from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, a sample of 8,984 young adults born between 1980 and 1984. Event history analyses are used to examine the timing of home‐leaving (n = 810,274 person‐months), and among those who leave, the timing of home‐returning (n = 630,394 person‐months). Criminal justice contact is measured via self‐reported arrests and spells of incarceration.
Results
Across both the short term and long term, there is a robust association between criminal justice contact and residential transitions out of and back into the parental home. The risk of experiencing home‐leaving or home‐returning is considerably higher in the month an individual is arrested or completes a spell of incarceration, compared to individuals with no contact. Additionally, especially for arrest, the risk of each residential transition remains elevated in the months and years that follow contact.
Conclusion
Findings highlight how the criminal justice system may complicate the transition to adulthood by contributing to unstable residential trajectories.
This article extends the existing literature about the consequences that having a prison record has on formerly incarcerated men’s labor market outcomes by projecting forward to think about what the diminished labor market prospects may mean for men when they reach retirement age. We find that formerly incarcerated men have little wealth accumulated by their late 40s and 50s, that they have limited access to on-the-job pensions, and that some may not even be able to rely on Social Security when they are old. The article uses data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79) and focuses most of its attention on the plight of Black men and Latino men, as this is the subset of the population that was particularly affected by the nation’s mass incarceration policies of the late 20th century. The implications of the findings for Black and Brown men’s prospects during old age are discussed, as are the implications for the way that policy scholars think about race, aging, and public policy.
Objective
This study examines the impact of incorporating institutional transitions (e.g., military, higher education, incarceration) into the definition of home‐leaving for estimates of cumulative risks of first home‐leaving in the transition to adulthood and racial/ethnic differences therein.
Background
The departure from the parental home is considered an important milestone in the transition to adulthood. However, to date, studies of the timing, prevalence, and nature of this key milestone have not generally incorporated the broader range of experiences with residential components that young adults increasingly face—such as military service and incarceration.
Method
Life table analysis of 6,501 individuals from the 1997 National Longitudinal Study of Youth is used to estimate overall and race/ethnicity‐specific cumulative risks of first home‐leaving using two measures of home‐leaving: one that relies exclusively on household rosters and a second that incorporates information about departures for institutions beyond the family and household. Multinomial regression is then used to estimate young adults' likelihoods of first home‐leaving for different types of arrangements and institutional settings.
Results
An institution‐inclusive definition of home‐leaving yields higher estimates of the risk of leaving the parental home by age 31 than a roster‐based definition. The institution‐inclusive measure also estimates greater racial/ethnic variation in the timing of first departure and provides insights into the racial/ethnic differences in the types of transitions experienced.
Conclusion
Variations in the definition of “adult” transitions can impact conclusions about the prevalence, timing, and racial/ethnic variation in key life events.
Increasing access to diverse types of credit and spreading indebtedness across many social groups were significant economic developments of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, with implications for social inequality and insecurity. This review evaluates the role of credit and debt in social inequality in the United States. Credit and debt shape inequalities along multiple pathways, in defining social inclusion and exclusion, directing life chances, and facilitating oppression. On the basis of this review, I conclude that building on the progress made in prior research calls for a relational approach to understanding credit, debt, and inequality that includes a focus on the powerful actors that benefit from a political economy increasingly dependent on credit and debt to distribute, regulate, and control social resources. I close by identifying outstanding questions that need to be answered in order to move forward our understanding of economic inequality and insecurity, as well as for social policy and the prospects for collective action.
Purpose The purpose of this paper was three-fold: 1. Present an overview of the core requirements of causal mediation analysis; 2. Evaluate the quantity and quality of current mediation research in criminology and criminal justice; 3. Demonstrate the proper use of causal mediation analysis in testing criminological theory. Methods Core requirements in conducting causal mediation analysis are examined, followed by a review of mediation research published in the last 10 issues of 8 high-ranking criminology and criminal justice journals. Recommendations are then offered. Results Five core requirements (causal order, causal direction, confirmatory model, evaluating significance, and sensitivity testing) for causal mediation analysis are identified. A survey of top journals in criminology and criminal justice revealed that while mediation analysis is commonly found in the literature, most studies violate one or more of the core requirements of the causal mediation method. In addition to exploring simple mediation, multiple mediation and moderation are also discussed. Conclusions Causal mediation analysis has a great deal to offer the fields of criminology and criminal justice, particularly when it comes to building, testing, and integrating theories. To be effective, however, the method must be properly utilized and implemented.
A considerable literature documents the deleterious economic consequences of incarceration. However, little is known about the consequences of incarceration for household assets-a distinct indicator of economic well-being that may be especially valuable to the survival of low-income families-or about the spillover economic consequences of incarceration for families. In this article, we use longitudinal data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study to examine how incarceration is associated with asset ownership among formerly incarcerated men and their romantic partners. Results, which pay careful attention to the social forces that select individuals into incarceration, show that incarceration is negatively associated with ownership of a bank account, vehicle, and home among men and that these consequences for asset ownership extend to the romantic partners of these men. These associations are concentrated among men who previously held assets. Results also show that post-incarceration changes in romantic relationships are an important pathway by which even short-term incarceration depletes assets.
Limited attention has been devoted to the dimensionality of the low self-control scales commonly constructed in two nationally representative datasets routinely used to test self-control theory—Add Health and NLSY79. We assess the measurement properties of the low self-control scales by comparing a series of exploratory and confirmatory models that are appropriate for the categorical nature of the observed items, including unidimensional, correlated factors, second-order factor, and bifactor models. Additionally, based on these results we explore the predictive validity of the respective scales on adolescents’ delinquent behavior. The results indicate that the low self-control scales in these data have acceptable levels of internal consistency but do not represent unidimensional latent factors. Rather, scales are best represented by a second-order factor structure. When measured this way, our Add Health scale is associated with delinquency in a cross-sectional context and our NLSY79 scale predicts delinquency longitudinally. This study reveals that low self-control is best conceptualized as a multidimensional construct within these data. The results of this study provide guidance to researchers measuring low self-control in either dataset (or other data sources) and inform the larger self-control theory measurement literature.
Rising incarceration rates in the United States, as well as the concentration of incarceration among already marginalized individuals, has led some scholars to suggest that incarceration increases economic inequality among American men. But little is known about the consequences of incarceration for wealth, about incarceration's contribution to Black-White disparities in wealth, or about the broader effects of incarceration on communities. In this article, we use state-level panel data (from 1985 to 2005) to examine the relationship between incarceration rates and the Black-White gap in homeownership, a distinct and important measure of wealth. Results, which are robust to an array of model specifications and robustness checks, show that incarceration rates diminish homeownership rates among Blacks and, in doing so, widen Black-White inequalities in homeownership. Therefore, the findings suggest that the consequences of incarceration extend beyond the offender and may increase inequality in household wealth.
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The concept of vacancy chains, originally developed in Harrison White’s pioneering analysis of organizational mobility processes, has been extended to phenomena as diverse as national labor and housing markets, the historical development of professions, gender and ethnic group discrimination in job and housing markets, organizational demography, and the mobility of hermit crabs to empty snail shells. In all populations in which they occur—whether human or animal—vacancy chains appear to organize a variety of social processes in nearly identical ways. This chapter provides a broad and relatively nonmathematical review of the vacancy chain literature covering basic definitions and formulations, main theoretical ideas and assumptions, comparisons of social processes in different vacancy chain systems, and several conceptual and methodological extensions to vacancy chain analysis. The review concludes by discussing a number of outstanding problems, present limitations, and promising areas for future research using the vacancy chain approach to mobility.
The purpose of this article is to describe statistical procedures to assess how prevention and intervention programs achieve their effects. The analyses require the measurement of intervening or mediating variables hypothesized to represent the causal mechanism by which the prevention program achieves its effects. Methods to estimate mediation are illustrated in the evaluation of a health promotion program designed to reduce dietary cholesterol and a school-based drug prevention program. The methods are relatively easy to apply and the information gained from such analyses should add to our understanding of prevention.
Sociologists have contributed relatively little to our understanding of rising inequality of earnings and income in the United States. The author considers both why that has been the case and the degree to which it matters. Suggestions are offered about how a comparative perspective can help to shed some light on developments in the United States.
Logit and probit models are widely used in empirical sociological research. However, the widespread practice of comparing the coefficients of a given variable across differently specified models does not warrant the same interpretation in logits and probits as in linear regression. Unlike in linear models, the change in the coefficient of the variable of interest cannot be straightforwardly attributed to the inclusion of confounding variables. The reason for this is that the variance of the underlying latent variable is not identified and will differ between models. We refer to this as the problem of rescaling. We propose a solution that allows researchers to assess the influence of confounding relative to the influence of rescaling, and we develop a test statistic that allows researchers to assess the statistical significance of both confounding and rescaling. We also show why y-standardized coefficients and average partial effects are not suitable for comparing coefficients across models. We present examples of the application of our method using simulated data and data from the National Educational Longitudinal Survey.
Recent research suggests that the use of monetary sanctions as a supplementary penalty in state and federal criminal courts is expanding, and that their imposition creates substantial and deleterious legal debt. Little is known, however, about the factors that influence the discretionary imposition of these penalties. This study offers a comprehensive account of the role socio-cultural factors, especially race and ethnicity, have in this institutional sanctioning process. We rely on multilevel statistical analysis of the imposition of monetary sanctions in Washington State courts to test our theory. The theoretical framework emphasizes the need to treat race and ethnicity as complex cultural categories, the meaning and institutional effects of which may vary across time and space. Findings indicate that racialized crime scripts, such as the association of Latinos with drugs, affect defendants whose wrong-doing is stereotype congruent. Moreover, all individuals accused of committing racially and ethnically stigmatized offenses in racialized contexts may experience the courtesy stigma that flows from racialization. We find that race and ethnicity are not just individual attributes but cultural categories that shape the distribution of stigma and the institutional consequences that flow from it.
The expansion of the U.S. penal system has important consequences for poverty and inequality, yet little is known about the imposition of monetary sanctions. This study analyzes national and state-level court data to assess their imposition and interview data to identify their social and legal consequences. Findings indicate that monetary sanctions are imposed on a substantial majority of the millions of people convicted of crimes in the United States annually and that legal debt is substantial relative to expected earnings. This indebtedness reproduces disadvantage by reducing family income, by limiting access to opportunities and resources, and by increasing the likelihood of ongoing criminal justice involvement.
This article combines procedures for single-level mediational analysis with multilevel modeling techniques in order to appropriately test mediational effects in clustered data. A simulation study compared the performance of these multilevel mediational models with that of single-level mediational models in clustered data with individual- or group-level initial independent variables, individual- or group-level mediators, and individual level outcomes. The standard errors of mediated effects from the multilevel solution were generally accurate, while those from the single-level procedure were downwardly biased, often by 20% or more. The multilevel advantage was greatest in those situations involving group-level variables, larger group sizes, and higher intraclass correlations in mediator and outcome variables. Multilevel mediational modeling methods were also applied to data from a preventive intervention designed to reduce intentions to use steroids among players on high school football teams. This example illustrates differences between single-level and multilevel mediational modeling in real-world clustered data and shows how the multilevel technique may lead to more accurate results. Mediational analysis is a method that can help researchers understand the mechanisms underlying the phenomena they study. The basic mediational framework involves a three variable system in which an initial independent variable affects a mediational variable, which, in turn, affects an outcome variable (Baron & Kenny, 1986). The aim of mediational analysis is to determine whether the relation between the initial variable and the outcome is due, wholly or in part, to the mediator. Mediational analysis is applicable across a wide range of experimental and non-experimental
R package for Data Analysis using multilevel/hierarchical model
Testing multilevel mediation using hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) has gained tremendous popularity in recently years. However, biases could arise when no centering or grand-mean centering is used in these models. This study first summarizes three types of HLM-based multilevel mediation models, and then explains that in two types of these models, biases are produced when using current procedures of testing multilevel mediation. A Monte Carlo study was conducted to illustrate that HLM applied to grand-mean-centered data can under- or overestimate true mediational effects. Recommendations are provided with regard to the differentiation of within-group versus between-group mediation in multilevel settings.
Prison growth over the last quarter of the twentieth century is notable not only for its magnitude but also for the fact that it has disproportionately affected already disadvantaged segments of the population. The prison buildup generates three important observations about inequalities related to incarceration. African Americans are seven times more likely than whites to serve time in prison; educational disproportionality in exposure to the criminal-justice system has increased; and nonviolent offenders represent a growing proportion of prison inmates (Pettit and Western 2004; Mauer 1999). Criminal offenders and prison inmates face poor labor-market opportunities. Employers express a reluctance to hire ex-inmates (Pager 2003; Holzer 1996), and ex-inmates face earnings penalties of between 10 and 30 percent (Western, Kling, and Weiman 2001). Research that finds persistent incarceration penalties, even when controlling for indicators of productivity and criminal embeddedness, suggests the causal relevance of the stigma of incarceration. Explanations for incarceration effects that emphasize the stigma of contact with the criminal-justice system claim that individuals are typed or labeled as "essentially deviant" by formal agents of the criminal-justice system. Exposure to the criminal-justice system precedes the existence of any secondary or more positive characteristics of an individual, and the general consequence of being labeled essentially deviant means that one is viewed as less trustworthy and rule-abiding (Becker 1963). Although there is clear evidence of disproportionality in exposure to the criminal-justice system, we know relatively little about how the effects of incarceration vary by race, class, or criminal involvement. The ubiquity of incarceration among low-skilled minority men leads us to reconsider the relevance of social stigma for the economic fortunes of inmates. In an environment of "mass incarceration" (Garland 2001), stigma effects may be less severe, as incarceration may not provide a clear signal of trustworthiness or future productivity to employers. Harry J. Holzer, Steven Raphael, and Michael Stoll (2003) argue that the effects of incarceration may be minimized because employers statistically discriminate against groups with high rates of incarceration (for example, young black low-skilled men). Similarly situated young men already face poor job prospects due to structural divisions within labor markets that relegate low-skilled workers to jobs with low wages and little chance for earnings growth (Bernhardt et al. 2001). This chapter examines how the effects of incarceration on post-release employment and wages depend on offender characteristics. In order to investigate this question we assembled an administrative data set containing information on individuals who were in a Washington State prison between 1990 and 2000, linked to demographic, education, and earnings records. We use these data to examine post-release employment and wages in jobs covered by unemployment insurance (UI). We investigate how the effects of spending time in prison vary by race, education, and a general measure of criminal severity. We find that incarceration has mixed effects on post-release employment. Offenders experience temporary gains in UI-covered employment in the first year after release from prison, although the effect declines with time out of prison. Incarceration is consistently associated with declines in post-release wages. Subgroup differences in incarceration effects emphasize the significance of social stigma explanations, particularly for high-status offenders. The negative effects of incarceration on wages are greatest for those who are least likely to spend time in prison and for whom spending time in prison is strongly counternormative. Racial differences in post-release employment and wages highlight race as a "master status" and suggest that incarceration effects must be considered in relation to growing inequality in labor-market outcomes generated by structural divisions in labor markets. Prison incarceration has become a common occurrence among young low-skilled men in recent cohorts, and the penal system has taken on growing significance in accounts of inequality. Men at high risk of incarceration (for example, low-skilled, black) are not more heavily penalized for spending time in prison than other offenders. However, all ex-inmates experience post-release declines in wages, and declines are enduring for blacks. Further, even small wage penalties, when considered in relation to high rates of incarceration among disadvantaged men, deepen inequality and reinforce the growing cleavage between the economic opportunities of men involved in the criminal-justice system and those outside of it.
The award-winning Black Wealth / White Wealth offers a powerful portrait of racial inequality based on an analysis of private wealth. Melvin Oliver and Thomas Shapiro's groundbreaking research analyzes wealth - total assets and debts rather than income alone - to uncover deep and persistent racial inequality in America, and they show how public policies have failed to redress the problem.
The Federal Reserve Board's Survey of Consumer Finances for 2010 provides insights into changes in family income and net worth since the 2007 survey. The survey shows that, over the 2007–10 period, the median value of real (inflation-adjusted) family income before taxes fell 7.7 percent, while mean income fell more sharply, an 11.1 percent decline. Both median and mean net worth decreased even more dramatically than income over this period, though the relative movements in the median and the mean are reversed; the median fell 38.8 percent, and the mean fell 14.7 percent. This article reviews these and other changes in the financial condition of U.S. families, including developments in assets, liabilities, and debt payments.
5.4 million Americans-one in every forty voting age adults-are denied the right to participate in democratic elections because of a past or current felony conviction. In several American states, one in four black men cannot vote due to a felony conviction. In a country that prides itself on universal suffrage, how did the United States come to deny a voice to such a large percentage of its citizenry? What are the consequences of large-scale disenfranchisement-both for election outcomes, and for public policy more generally? This book exposes one of the most important, yet little known, threats to the health of American democracy today. It reveals the centrality of racial factors in the origins of these laws, and their impact on politics today. Marshalling the first real empirical evidence on the issue to make a case for reform, this analysis informs all future policy and political debates on the laws governing the political rights of criminals.
Social science research on stigma has grown dramatically over the past two decades, particularly in social psychology, where researchers have elucidated the ways in which people construct cognitive categories and link those categories to stereotyped beliefs. In the midst of this growth, the stigma concept has been criticized as being too vaguely defined and individually focused. In response to these criticisms, we define stigma as the co-occurrence of its components-labeling, stereotyping, separation, status loss, and discrimination-and further indicate that for stigmatization to occur, power must be exercised. The stigma concept we construct has implications for understanding several core issues in stigma research, ranging from the definition of the concept to the reasons stigma sometimes represents a very persistent predicament in the lives of persons affected by it. Finally, because there are so many stigmatized circumstances and because stigmatizing processes can affect multiple domains of people's lives, stigmatization probably has a dramatic bearing on the distribution of life chances in such areas as earnings, housing, criminal involvement, health, and life itself. It follows that social scientists who are interested in understanding the distribution of such life chances should also be interested in stigma.
The reward and communication systems of science are considered.
I review studies of the roles played by cognitive skills and noncognitive traits and behaviors in stratification processes. Bowles & Gintis (1976) were among the first to argue that noncognitive traits and behaviors are more important than cognitive skills in determining schooling and employment outcomes. Now, 25 years later, these authors (Bowles & Gintis 2002) claim that the ensuing literature vindicates their position. There is much evidence for this claim, although it remains unresolved. I locate their discussion within the larger literature that has appeared during this time period. This literature provides an emerging interdisciplinary paradigm for the study of socioeconomic attainment, including differentials by social class, race, and ethnic background.
Although growth in the U.S. prison population over the past twenty-five years has been widely discussed, few studies examine changes in inequality in imprisonment. We study penal inequality by estimating lifetime risks of imprisonment for black and white men at different levels of education. Combining administrative, survey, and census data, we estimate that among men born between 1965 and 1969, 3 percent of whites and 20 percent of blacks had served time in prison by their early thirties. The risks of incarceration are highly stratified by education. Among black men born during this period, 30 percent of those without college education and nearly 60 percent of high school dropouts went to prison by 1999. The novel pervasiveness of imprisonment indicates the emergence of incarceration as a new stage in the life course of young low-skill black men.
In response to dramatic increases in imprisonment, a burgeoning literature considers the consequences of incarceration for family life, almost always documenting negative outcomes. But effects of incarceration may be more complicated and nuanced. In this article, we consider the countervailing consequences of paternal incarceration for a host of family relationships, including fathers' parenting, mothers' parenting, and the relationship between parents. Using longitudinal data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, we find recent paternal incarceration sharply diminishes parenting behaviors among residential but not nonresidential fathers. Virtually all of the association between incarceration and parenting among residential fathers is explained by changes in fathers' relationships with their children's mothers. Consequences for mothers' parenting, however, are weak and inconsistent. Furthermore, our findings show recent paternal incarceration sharply increases the probability a mother repartners, potentially offsetting some losses from the biological father's lesser involvement while simultaneously leading to greater family complexity. Taken together, the collateral consequences of paternal incarceration for family life are complex and countervailing.
Stochastic probability processes are considered as models of social mobility. Such processes are extremely similar to, and hence useful in the study of human mobility. However, the best known of these models, the stationery Markov chain, provides a poor representation of mobility, largely because of its one-step dependency axiom. An elaboration of the Markov chain is suggested, using an additional axiom to the effect that one's probability of remaining in a social or geographic location increases monotonically with increases in duration of prior residence in it. This axiom generates a dynamic stochastic model of mobility. Formal properties of the model are displayed. Relevant computer simulation experiments and empirical research are described.
Modernization literature uses the criteria of ascription and achievement to distinguish pre- and post-industrial stratification systems. Analysts usually consider the development of systems of mass education and changes in the division of labor as the chief structural sources of such changes. However, sequences of such change do not necessarily recapitulate these contrasts. If the study of sequences is placed in the forefront of social change research, the life cycle point appropriate for the distinction between ascription and achievement becomes problematic. Moreover, the emphasis on temporal order derived from the stress on sequence suggests that situationally anchored cohort studies of intra-generation mobility are better for studying certain aspects of these processes than inter-generational mobility studies. A series of propositions are advanced contrasting socio-historical and biological explanations for changing mobility streams associated with education. The propositions are then applied to the experiences of three cohorts in Puerto Rican development. We conclude by noting the following. (1) Certain education related changes increase ascriptive characteristics by transferring some work promotion criteria out of the workplace into the classroom. (2) Like all dichotomies, the contrast between ascription and achievement is much too simple. It does not incorporate the multiple sequences of change, nor consider their direction problematic.
The concept of ascription introduced into sociology by Linton has enjoyed an enviable career by virtue of the breadth of its acceptance and the shallowness of examination to which it has been subjected. The basic, widely accepted position on ascription by Linton, Davis and Parsons is that it is useful for society to ascribe functions in the division of labor so that socialization for various roles can be successfully carried out. Parsons adds the view that ascription of father's work-role status to children is inevitable, given the solidarity of the nuclear family. These and other arguments supporting ascription are examined in light of the various reference points used for ascription. Of these, age and sex, in strictly delimited ways, are found to be useful bases of ascription, because they relate to performance capacity. Other reference points for ascription, e.g. race, religion, ethnicity, residence, etc. are not inherently related to performance capacity and their use for purposes of ascription is better explained by power relations between ascriptive sub-categories. Similarly, Parson's treatment of kinship as a basis for ascription to children of father's status can also be viewed in terms of the distribution of power among families.
A life course perspective on crime indicates that incarceration can disrupt key life transitions. Life course analysis of occupations finds that earnings mobility depends on stable employment in career jobs. These two lines of research thus suggest that incarceration reduces ex-inmates' access to the steady jobs that usually produce earnings growth among young men. Consistent with this argument, evidence for slow wage growth among ex-inmates is provided by analysis of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Because incarceration is so prevalent-one-quarter of black non-college males in the survey were interviewed between 1979 and 1998 while in prison or jail-the effect of imprisonment on individual wages also increases aggregate race and ethnic wage inequality.
Les AA. examinent le modele developpe par G. Farkas et K. Vicknair qui permet d'etudier les competences dans les domaines du calcul, de la lecture, de la maitrise du vocabulaire et de la langue orale. Ils montrent que celui-ci s'inspire des tests d'evaluation des competences intellectuelles utilises par l'armee americaine. Ils presentent un certain nombre de donnees collectees a partir des tests militaires en 1991. Ils montrent qu'il existe de grandes differences entre blancs et afro-americains sur le plan des competences intellectuelles contrairement a ce qu'affirment les analyses de Farkas et Vicknair
A large literature documents the deleterious economic consequences of incarceration. But little is known about the consequences of incarceration for household wealth, an indicator of economic wellbeing that may be especially important to the survival of low-income families for whom incarceration is common. In this article, we use individual-level data (from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study) and state-level panel data (from 1985 to 2005) to examine how incarceration is associated with asset accumulation and asset loss among formerly incarcerated men, their romantic partners, and their communities. Results from the individual-level data, which pay careful attention to the social forces that select individuals into incarceration, document that incarceration is negatively associated with vehicle and bank account ownership among men and that these associations are concentrated among men who previously held such assets. In addition, the economic consequences of incarceration spill over to the romantic partners of these men, especially those living with men prior to their incarceration, who report a lower likelihood of home and vehicle ownership. Results from the state-level data document that incarceration rates diminish homeownership rates among Blacks and, in doing so, widen Black-white inequalities in homeownership. Taken together, the results show that the considerable collateral consequences of incarceration may increase inequality in household wealth.
Rising imprisonment rates and declining marriage rates among low-education African Americans motivate an analysis of the effects of incarceration on marriage. An event history analysis of 2,041 unmarried men from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth suggests that men are unlikely to marry in the years they serve in prison. A separate analysis of 2,762 married men shows that incarceration during marriage significantly increases the risk of divorce or separation. We simulate aggregate marriage rates using estimates from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and find that the prevalence of marriage would change little if incarceration rates were reduced.
Each year, more than 700,000 convicted offenders are released from prison and reenter neighborhoods across the country. Prior studies have found that minority ex-inmates tend to reside in more disadvantaged neighborhoods than do white ex-inmates. However, because these studies do not control for pre-prison neighborhood conditions, we do not know how much (if any) of this racial variation is due to arrest and incarceration, or if these observed findings simply reflect existing racial residential inequality. Using a nationally representative dataset that tracks individuals over time, we find that only whites live in significantly more disadvantaged neighborhoods after prison than prior to prison. Blacks and Hispanics do not, nor do all groups (whites, blacks, and Hispanics) as a whole live in worse neighborhoods after prison. We attribute this racial variation in the effect of incarceration to the high degree of racial neighborhood inequality in the United States: because white offenders generally come from much better neighborhoods, they have much more to lose from a prison spell. In addition to advancing our understanding of the social consequences of the expansion of the prison population, these findings demonstrate the importance of controlling for preprison characteristics when investigating the effects of incarceration on residential outcomes.
This article presents a method for estimating and interpreting total, direct, and indirect effects in logit or probit models. The method extends the decomposition properties of linear models to these models; it closes the much-discussed gap between results based on the “difference in coefficients” method and the “product of coefficients” method in mediation analysis involving nonlinear probability models models; it reports effects measured on both the logit or probit scale and the probability scale; and it identifies causal mediation effects under the sequential ignorability assumption. We also show that while our method is computationally simpler than other methods, it always performs as well as, or better than, these methods. Further derivations suggest a hitherto unrecognized issue in identifying heterogeneous mediation effects in nonlinear probability models. We conclude the article with an application of our method to data from the National Educational Longitudinal Study of 1988.
One strand of educational inequality research aims at decomposing the effect of social class origin on educational choices into primary and secondary effects. We formalize this distinction and present a new and simple method that allows empirical assessment of the relative magnitudes of primary and secondary effects. Contrary to other decomposition methods, this new method is unbiased, is more intuitive, and decomposes effects of both discrete and continuous measures of social origin. The method also provides analytically derived statistical tests and is easily calculated with standard statistical software. We give examples using the Danish Longitudinal Survey of Youth.
The research findings with respect to the relationship between incarceration and employment are consistent enough that it is tempting to conclude that incarceration causes deterioration in ex-inmates' employment prospects. Yet, causality remains tenuous for several reasons. For one, studies frequently rely on samples of nonincarcerated subjects that are not truly "at risk" of incarceration, which undermines their use as comparison samples and potentially biases estimates of the impact of incarceration on life outcomes. Additionally, even with confidence about causal identification, the field remains ignorant about the precise mechanism by which incarceration erodes employment and earnings. To address these gaps, this study uses the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 to estimate the impact of incarceration during late adolescence and early adulthood on short- and long-term employment outcomes. The subjects of interest are all individuals who are convicted of a crime for the first time, some of whom receive a sentence of incarceration following their conviction. Broad measures of legal and illegal employment are used to explore possible avenues by which incarceration affects individual work histories.
This article addresses two basic questions. First, it examines whether incarceration has a lasting impact on health functioning. Second, because blacks are more likely than whites to be exposed to the negative effects of the penal system—including fractured social bonds, reduced labor market prospects, and high levels of infectious disease—it considers whether the penal system contributes to racial health disparities. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and both regression and propensity matching estimators, the article empirically demonstrates a significant relationship between incarceration and later health status. More specifically, incarceration exerts lasting effects on midlife health functioning. In addition, this analysis finds that, due primarily to disproportionate rates of incarceration, the penal system plays a role in perpetuating racial differences in midlife physical health functioning.
With over 2 million individuals currently incarcerated, and over half a million prisoners released each year, the large and growing number of men being processed through the criminal justice system raises important questions about the consequences of this massive institutional intervention. This article focuses on the consequences of incarceration for the employment outcomes of black and white job seekers. The present study adopts an experimental audit approach-in which matched pairs of individuals applied for real entry-level jobs-to formally test the degree to which a criminal record affects subsequent employment opportunities. The findings of this study reveal an important, and much underrecognized, mechanism of stratification. A criminal record presents a major barrier to employment, with important implications for racial disparities.
Comparative research contrasts the corporatist welfare states of Europe with the unregulated U.S. labor market to explain low rates of U.S. unemployment in the 1980s and 1990s. In contrast, this article argues that the U.S. state made a large and coercive intervention into the labor market through the expansion of the penal system. The impact of incarceration on unemployment has two conflicting dynamics. In the short run, U.S. incarceration lowers conventional unemployment measures by removing able-bodied, working-age men from labor force counts. In the long run, social survey data show that incarceration raises unemployment by reducing the job prospects of ex-convicts. Strong U.S. employment performance in the 1980s and 1990s has thus depended in part on a high and increasing incarceration rate.
HE SUBJECT OF THIS ESSAY is a problem in the sociology of science that has long been of interest to me. That problem, a candid friend tells me, is somewhat obscured by the formidable title assigned to it. Yet, properly deci- phered, the title is not nearly as opaque as it might at first seem. Consider first the signal emitted by the Roman numeral II in the main title. It informs us that the paper follows on an earlier one, "The Matthew Effect in Science, " which I finally put into print a good many years ago.' The ponderous, not to say lumpy, subtitle goes on to signal the direction of this follow-on. The first concept, cumulative advantage, applied to the domain of science, refers to the social processes through which various kinds of opportunities for scientific inquiry as well as the subsequent symbolic and material rewards for the results of that inquiry tend to accumulate for individual practitioners of science, as they do also for organizations engaged in scientific work. The concept of cumulative advantage directs our attention to the ways in which initial comparative advan- tages of trained capacity successive increments of 7 s
This study extends research on the consequences of mass imprisonment and the causes of children's behavioral problems by considering the effects of paternal incarceration on children's physical aggression at age 5 using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study. Results suggest that paternal incarceration is associated with increased physical aggression for boys, and that effects are concentrated among boys whose fathers were neither incarcerated for a violent offense nor abusive to the boys' mother. Results also suggest that paternal incarceration may decrease girls' physical aggression, although this finding is not robust. Taken together, results imply that mass imprisonment may contribute to a system of stratification in which crime and incarceration are passed down from fathers to sons (but not daughters).
This article considers the relationship between employers' attitudes toward hiring exoffenders and their actual hiring behavior. Using data from an experimental audit study of entry-level jobs matched with a telephone survey of the same employers, the authors compare employers' willingness to hire black and white ex-offenders, as represented both by their self-reports and by their decisions in actual hiring situations. Employers who indicated a greater likelihood of hiring ex-offenders in the survey were no more likely to hire an ex-offender in practice. Furthermore, although the survey results indicated no difference in the likelihood of hiring black versus white ex-offenders, audit results show large differences by race. These comparisons suggest that employer surveys-even those using an experimental design to control for social desirability bias-may be insufficient for drawing conclusions about the actual level of hiring discrimination against stigmatized groups.