Child’s Gender, Young Fathers’ Crime, and Spillover Effects in Criminal Behavior
研究发现，如果第一个孩子是儿子而非女儿，年轻父亲在生育后头几年的犯罪定罪显著减少，这种效应还会通过社会互动溢出到同社区的其他年轻人，产生更大的犯罪减少效果。
Men who father their first child at a very young age are convicted of significantly fewer crimes in the first years after birth if the child is a son rather than a daughter. This leads to behavioral spillovers that reduce criminal convictions among other young men living in the same neighborhood, with the resulting crime multipliers affecting peers’ crime even after the primary impact on the focal individual has dissipated. Through social multipliers, prevention policies that target potential criminals at an early stage, therefore, lead to larger reductions in the cost of crime than suggested by primary effects alone.