Incarceration and Fragile Families

1. Incarceration and Fragile Families Bruce Western, Princeton University Leonard M. Lopoo, Syracuse University Sara McLanahan, Princeton University May 2004 This research was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation and the Russell Sage Foundation

2. Incarceration and Family Stability • The prison boom has made imprisonment a normal life event for young non-college African American men • Low-education black couples have experienced a large drop in marriage rates and a large increase in non-marital birth rates • Could incarceration be reducing the likelihood of marriage? Is this necessarily a bad thing?

3. Our Empirical Analysis • Incarceration is measured with fathers’ and mothers’ reports in the Fragile Families Survey • We construct a measure of father’s prior incarceration, using mothers’ and fathers’ data • Prior incarceration is related to measures of divorce and cohabitation (longitudinal character of the data attempts to adjust for unobserved heterogeneity) • Low marriage rates among ex-offenders may not be a bad outcome, if men are violent. We can also look at domestic violence

4. Useful Features of FF for Studying the Effects of Incarceration • The survey asks mothers and fathers whether the father has ever been incarcerated • The survey also provides detailed information about the status of the couple’s relationship, and asks mothers if they have ever been assaulted by their partners • Survey data are currently available at two points in time

5. Mothers’ and Fathers’ Reports of Incarceration

6. Mothers’ and Fathers’ Reports of Incarceration

8. Some Predictors of Marriage at 1 Year

9. Incarceration Effects

10. Aggregate Effects of Incarceration Observed marriage rates and predicted marriage rates at an incarceration rate of zero, men aged 30-34, 1999

11. Implications of the Incarceration Effects • Incarceration may have large aggregate effects on rates of marriage and cohabitation in poor urban communities with high incarceration rates • Low marriage rates, although associated with social and economic disadvantage, may reduce women’s exposure to violence and crime • We can also study patterns of domestic violence with the Fragile Families data

14. Logistic Regression on Post-Pregnancy Domestic Violence

15. Conclusions • Analysis of Fragile Families data suggests that incarceration reduces the likelihood of marriage and cohabitation • Incarceration effects have a large aggregate impact on marriage rates for non-college black couples • Formerly-incarcerated men are more likely to be involved in domestic violence • BUT, there are drug offenders are less likely to be violent than others, and these effects are offset if men are in strong relationships