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Criminal court fees, earnings, and expenditures: A multi-state RD analysis of survey and administrative data

February 2023

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  Authors: Caroline Walker, Michael Mueller-Smith, Benjamin Pyle

  Working Paper Number:

  CES-23-01

  This paper studies the impact of adult prosecution on recidivism and employment trajectories for adolescent, first-time felony defendants. We use extensive linked Criminal Justice Administrative Record System and socio-economic data from Wayne County, Michigan (Detroit). Using the discrete age of majority rule and a regression discontinuity design, we find that adult prosecution reduces future criminal charges over 5 years by 0.48 felony cases (? 20%) while also worsening labor market outcomes: 0.76 fewer employers (? 19%) and $674 fewer earnings (? 21%) per year. We develop a novel econometric framework that combines standard regression discontinuity methods with predictive machine learning models to identify mechanism-specific treatment effects that underpin the overall impact of adult prosecution. We leverage these estimates to consider four policy counterfactuals: (1) raising the age of majority, (2) increasing adult dismissals to match the juvenile disposition rates, (3) eliminating adult incarceration, and (4) expanding juvenile record sealing opportunities to teenage adult defendants. All four scenarios generate positive returns for government budgets. When accounting for impacts to defendants as well as victim costs borne by society stemming from increases in recidivism, we find positive social returns for juvenile record sealing expansions and dismissing marginal adult charges; raising the age of majority breaks even. Eliminating prison for first-time adult felony defendants, however, increases net social costs. Policymakers may still find this attractive if they are willing to value beneficiaries (taxpayers and defendants) slightly higher (124%) than potential victims.
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  CES-26-31

  Federal housing assistance programs, such as those run by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), have been shown to reduce rent burden and improve housing stability for program participants, which may in turn have downstream impacts on their labor market attachment and career trajectories. However, existing studies from individual cities or states provide mixed evidence on the association of housing assistance with labor market outcomes. By linking HUD administrative records to matched employee-employer earnings records from the Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) program, we document how the labor market trajectories of program participants change as they enter and exit federal housing assistance programs, examining outcomes over a 14-year window surrounding entry or exit. In our analysis of entry, we find that the employment rates and earnings of first-time HUD program participants begin to increase upon entering a HUD program, which represents a reversal of prior declining trends in these outcomes. Suggestive of a positive association, these increases in employment and earnings trends exceed those of low-income non-participants from the American Community Survey (ACS). In our analysis of exits, we find that program participants who eventually leave a HUD program have increasing pre-exit trends in employment and earnings that then flatten upon exiting. Comparing these negative changes in trend to the relatively stable trajectories of those who remain in HUD programs throughout the analysis suggests that exits are associated with diminished employment and earnings trajectories.
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  Childhood Housing and Adult Earnings: A Between-Siblings Analysis of Housing Vouchers and Public Housing
  

  January 2013

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  CES-13-48RR

  To date, research on the long-term effects of childhood participation in voucher-assisted and public housing has been limited by the lack of data and suitable identification strategies. We create a national level longitudinal data set that enables us to analyze how children's housing experiences affect adult earnings and incarceration rates. While naive estimates suggest there are substantial negative consequences to childhood participation in voucher assisted and public housing, this result appears to be driven largely by selection of households into housing assistance programs. To mitigate this source of bias, we employ household fixed-effects specifications that use only within-household (across-sibling) variation for identification. Compared to naive specifications, household fixed-effects estimates for earnings are universally more positive, and they suggest that there are positive and statistically significant benefits from childhood residence in assisted housing on young adult earnings for nearly all demographic groups. Childhood participation in assisted housing also reduces the likelihood of incarceration across all household race/ethnicity groups. Time spent in voucher-assisted or public housing is especially beneficial for females from non-Hispanic Black households, who experience substantial increases in expected earnings and lower incarceration rates.
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  June 2025

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  CES-25-39

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• Working Paper

  
  
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  June 2021

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  CES-21-14

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  The Long-Term Effects of Income for At-Risk Infants: Evidence from Supplemental Security Income
  

  March 2024

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  CES-24-10

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  Credit Access in the United States
  

  July 2025

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  CES-25-45

  We construct new population-level linked administrative data to study households' access to credit in the United States. These data reveal large differences in credit access by race, class, and hometown. By age 25, Black individuals, those who grew up in low-income families, and those who grew up in certain areas (including the Southeast and Appalachia) have significantly lower credit scores than other groups. Consistent with lower scores generating credit constraints, these individuals have smaller balances, more credit inquiries, higher credit card utilization rates, and greater use of alternative higher-cost forms of credit. Tests for alternative definitions of algorithmic bias in credit scores yield results in opposite directions. From a calibration perspective, group-level differences in credit scores understate differences in delinquency: conditional on a given credit score, Black individuals and those from low-income families fall delinquent at relatively higher rates. From a balance perspective, these groups receive lower credit scores even when comparing those with the same future repayment behavior. Addressing both of these biases and expanding credit access to groups with lower credit scores requires addressing group-level differences in delinquency rates. These delinquencies emerge soon after individuals access credit in their early twenties, often due to missed payments on credit cards, student loans, and other bills. Comprehensive measures of individuals' income profiles, income volatility, and observed wealth explain only a small portion of these repayment gaps. In contrast, we find that the large variation in repayment across hometowns mostly reflects the causal effect of childhood exposure to these places. Places that promote upward income mobility also promote repayment and expand credit access even conditional on income, suggesting that common place-level factors may drive behaviors in both credit and labor markets. We discuss suggestive evidence for several mechanisms that drive our results, including the role of social and cultural capital. We conclude that gaps in credit access by race, class, and hometown have roots in childhood environments.
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  The Impact of Childcare Costs on Mothers' Labor Force Participation
  

  April 2025

  Authors: Danielle H. Sandler, Linden McBride, Valeska Araujo

  Working Paper Number:

  CES-25-25

  The rising costs of childcare pose challenges for families, leading to difficult choices including those impacting mothers' labor force participation. This paper investigates the relationship between childcare costs and maternal employment. Using data from the National Database of Childcare Prices, the American Community Survey, and the Longitudinal Employer Household Dynamics, we estimate the impact of childcare costs on mothers' labor force participation through two empirical strategies. A fixed-effects approach controls for geographic and temporal heterogeneity in costs as well as mothers' idiosyncratic preferences for work and childcare, while an instrumental variables approach addresses the endogeneity of mothers' preferences for work and childcare by leveraging exogenous geographic and temporal variation in childcare licensing requirements. Our findings across both research designs indicate that higher childcare costs reduce labor force participation among mothers, with lower-income mothers exhibiting greater responsiveness to changes in childcare costs.
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