Childhood Exposure to Segregation and Long-Run Criminal Involvement Evidence from the "Whole of Sweden" Strategy #
Year: 2015
Type: preprint
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: Crime is disproportionately concentrated among minority youths living in highly segregated neighborhoods. In this paper we present quasi-experimental evidence on how exposure to immigrant residential segregation during childhood affects male youths’ criminal behavior. Our analysis exploits the “Whole of Sweden Strategy” in which all newly arrived refugees and their children during the years 1985–1994 were assigned to their initial neighborhood. We follow the children for a period up to 19 years using administrative records. We find evidence that exposure to a neighborhood with a large share of immigrants increases the probability of committing drug related crimes as well as raises the likelihood of being incarcerated later in life. Our results indicate that a one standard deviation decrease in segregation would shrink the immigrant-to-native crime gap for these specific types of offenses by about 20 percent. The impacts are mainly concentrated among youths with low educated parents. Our findings further lend some support to the idea that the relationship between segregation and crime may arise because of a weakened labor force attachment among individuals who grew up in segregated areas.
Institution: Stockholm University
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2138771755