The Crime Reducing Effect of Education
Open accessAbstract
In this paper, we present evidence on empirical connections between crime and education, using various data sources from Britain. A robust finding is that criminal activity is negatively associated with higher levels of education. However, it is essential to ensure that the direction of causation flows from education to crime. Therefore, we identify the effect of education on participation in criminal activity using changes in compulsory school leaving age laws over time to account for the endogeneity of education. In this causal approach, for property crimes, the negative crime-education relationship remains strong and significant. The implications of these findings are unambiguous and clear. They show that improving education can yield significant social benefits and can be a key policy tool in the drive to reduce crime.
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Years of education are negatively associated with criminal activities in the US and UK.
“Lochner and Moretti [2004] and Machin, Marie and Vujić [2010] find that years of education are negatively associated with criminal activities in the US and UK, respectively.”
From Personality Psychology and Economics (2011) · cites this paper as Machin, Marie and Vujić [2010]
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Personality Psychology and Economics
Almlund, M., Duckworth, A. L., Heckman, J., & Kautz, T. (2011) · National Bureau of Economic Research · doi:10.3386/w16822 · Cited by 540 · see citing works
- Authors
- Machin, S. J., Marie, O., & Vujic, S.
- Affiliations
- London School of Economics and Political Science (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Machin, Stephen J.
- Venue
- SSRN Electronic Journal
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2010
- ISSN
- 1556-5068 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W3126110430
- Cited by
- 74
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2025: 1 · 2024: 3 · 2023: 8 · 2022: 4 · 2021: 8 · 2020: 6 · 2019: 5 · 2018: 7 · 2017: 4 · 2016: 10 · 2015: 2 · 2014: 1 · 2013: 5 · 2012: 4
- Type
- posted content
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- doi.org
- Locations
- SSRN Electronic Journal (acceptedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Crime Patterns and Interventions
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis
- Social Sciences › Law › Criminal Justice and Penology
- Keywords
- education and crime, crime reduction, endogeneity of education, property crime, criminal activity, causal effects of education, criminal policy, United Kingdom
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