From economist Marina Adshade’s “Dollars And Sex” blog:
New research published in The Review of Economics and Statistics shows that growing incarceration has contributed to declining marriage rates. In fact, this paper finds that about 13% of the decline in marriage since 1990 can be explained by male incarceration.
Incarceration rates vary by socioeconomic class and also by race; in 2004, one in eight black males age 25-29 was incarcerated compared to one in 28 Hispanic males and one in 59 white males. If women search for future husband in their own community—where community is defined over geographic, economic or racial qualities—then some women are more disadvantaged than others. The evidence suggests that this is true. For example, black women are the most disadvantaged—about 18% percent of the decline in marriage rates among black women can be explained by incarceration. Hispanic women are also relatively disadvantaged, with about 10% of the reduction in marriage rates in that group explained by incarceration.
This effect is biggest for women with little education; particularly women with less than a high school education, but also for women with high school and some college. The only group of women unaffected by the trend is women who have a university degree, but it isn’t that surprising that these women do not draw their partners from the same pool of men who have been affected by the increase in incarceration rates.
From stopthedrugwar.org:
More than half a million people were behind bars for drug offenses in the United States at the end of last year, according to numbers from the Bureau of Justice Statistics. In a report released Sunday, Prisoners in 2004, the Justice Department number-crunchers found that people sentenced for drug crimes accounted for 21% of state prisoners and 55% of all federal prisoners.
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How is the proposition that the reverse hypothesis may also be supported by the evidence dealt with in this paper? Or, that both changes are caused by a third factor? In other words, has any consideration been given to the concept that perhaps male incarceration has increased because of declining marriage rates?
Back when extra-marital sex carried a higher social penalty the ability to gain access to regular sex gave men the incentive to get an education and a good job and to keep a clean police record so as to attract a wife. But marriage has been devalued in society in general and heavily devalued in some groups. Extra-marital sex doesn’t carry nearly as much of a societal penalty – in fact, in some areas it’s downright glorified. So is behaving at variance with the law. Combine those two and you’re likely to see more men running afoul of the law, which is going to raise incarceration rates.