The Consequences of Incarceration for Mortality in the United States
Open accessAbstract
Previous research has suggested that incarceration has negative implications for individuals’ well-being, health, and mortality. Most of these studies, however, have not followed former prisoners over an extended period and into older adult ages, when the risk of health deterioration and mortality is the greatest. Contributing to this literature, this study is the first to employ the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) to estimate the long-run association between individual incarceration and mortality over nearly 40 years. We also supplement those analyses with data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79). We then use these estimates to investigate the implications of the U.S. incarceration regime and the post-1980 incarceration boom for the U.S. health and mortality disadvantage relative to industrialized peer countries (the United Kingdom).
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Incarcerated individuals experience a four-to five-year reduction in life expectancy.
“Daza and colleagues (2020) found that incarcerated individuals experienced a four-to five-year reduction in life expectancy.”
From Innocence Mortality Tax: The Impact of Wrongful Conviction on Lifespan (2023) · cites this paper as Daza et al., 2020
The Results report an approximately four- to five-year difference in life expectancy at age 45 between former prisoners and people who had not been in prison. The Conclusion and Discussion describes this as an association. The citing sentence gives the right magnitude but omits the age and former-prisoner qualifiers and may imply a causal reduction that the paper does not establish. (LLM, conf=0.88)
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Cites
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Innocence Mortality Tax: The Impact of Wrongful Conviction on Lifespan
Catlin, M., & Redlich, A. D. (2023) · The Wrongful Conviction Law Review · doi:10.29173/wclawr98 · Cited by 3 · see citing works
“It is important to note that both Patterson (2013) and Daza et al. (2020) used estimates from the U.”
Background
- Authors
- Daza, S., Palloni, A., & Jones, J.
- Affiliations
- Center for Demography and Ecology, University of Wisconsin—Madison, 1180 Observatory Drive, Madison, WI 53706, USA
- University of Wisconsin–Madison (US)
- Corresponding author
- Palloni, Alberto
- Jones, Jerrett
- ORCID
- Palloni, Alberto
- Venue
- Demography
- Publisher
- Duke University Press
- Published
- 2020-03-19
- Volume
- 57
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 577-598
- ISSN
- 0070-3370 (ISSN-L)
- 1533-7790
- PMC
- PMC7710643
- OpenAlex
- W3011227495
- Cited by
- 53
- References
- 3
- Citations by year
- 2026: 8 · 2025: 13 · 2024: 8 · 2023: 13 · 2022: 4 · 2021: 5 · 2020: 2
- FWCI
- 8.03
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Licence
- www.springer.com/tdm (tdm)
- Locations
- Demography (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- DIGITAL.CSIC (Spanish National Research Council (CSIC)) (submittedVersion)
- SocArXiv (OSF Preprints) (submittedVersion)
- SocArXiv (OSF Preprints) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Funders
- University of Wisconsin-Madison (P30 AG017266)
- National Institute on Aging (AG017266, P01AG029409, P30AG017266)
- Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (R24HD047873, P2CHD047873)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis
- Social Sciences › Health › Health disparities and outcomes
- Social Sciences › Law › Criminal Justice and Penology
- Keywords
- incarceration, mortality, former prisoners, older adults, health disadvantage, United Kingdom comparison, Panel Study of Income Dynamics, National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979
- MeSH terms
- Correctional Facilities, Adult, Age Factors, Aged, Aged, 80 and over, Health Status, Humans, Longitudinal Studies, Middle Aged, Mortality, Prisoners, Sex Factors, Socioeconomic Factors, United States
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