The Effect of Education on Crime: Evidence from Prison Inmates, Arrests, and Self-Reports
利用美国各州义务教育法变化作为工具变量，发现教育显著降低犯罪参与概率，高中毕业带来的犯罪减少社会收益约占私人收益的14%-26%。
We estimate the effect of education on participation in criminal activity using changes in state compulsory schooling laws over time to account for the endogeneity of schooling decisions. Using Census and FBI data, we find that schooling significantly reduces the probability of incarceration and arrest. NLSY data indicate that our results are caused by changes in criminal behavior and not differences in the probability of arrest or incarceration conditional on crime. We estimate that the social savings from crime reduction associated with high school graduation (for men) is about 14–26 percent of the private return.