Labor Market Careers Before and After Incarceration

Arbeitspapier

We study the entry to formal employment and earnings of a large sample of convicts released from Hungarian prisons in 2002-2008. We identify the effect of the prison service on post-release careers by exploiting differences in the timing of incarceration, on the one hand, and estimating fixed effects models, on the other. For convicts with a single prison spell, we find initially negative effect on employment that turns positive after about one year while the impact on wages is permanently negative. A comparison with recidivists, for whom the employment effect is negative and the wage effect is weaker, suggests that these results are driven by a drop in the reservation wages of 'converted' criminals rather than the lack of discrimination. This reading is supported by further data showing that the ex-inmates, on average, make increased effort to find legitimate sources of living and support to finding jobs.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: IZA Discussion Papers ; No. 8644

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law ; Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search ; Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs: Other
• Subject: incarceration ; unemployment ; wage loss ; discrimination

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Kollo, Janos ; Czafit, Bence
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)
• (where): Bonn
• (when): 2014

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/106587
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:42 AM CET