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We present the results of three large-scale randomized controlled trials (RCTs) carried out in Chicago, testing interventions to reduce crime and dropout by changing the decision-making of economically disadvantaged youth. We study a program called Becoming a Man (BAM), developed by the non-profit Youth Guidance, in two RCTs implemented in 2009-10 and 2013-15. In the two studies participation in the program reduced total arrests during the intervention period by 28-35%, reduced violent-crime arrests by 45-50%, improved school engagement, and in the first study where we have follow-up data, increased graduation rates by 12-19%. The third RCT tested a program with partially overlapping components carried out in the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center (JTDC), which reduced readmission rates to the facility by 21%. These large behavioral responses combined with modest program costs imply benefit-cost ratios for these interventions from 5-to-1 up to 30-to-1 or more. Our data on mechanisms are not ideal, but we find no positive evidence that these effects are due to changes in emotional intelligence or social skills, self-control or "grit," or a generic mentoring effect. We find suggestive support for the hypothesis that the programs work by helping youth slow down and reflect on whether their automatic thoughts and behaviors are well suited to the situation they are in, or whether the situation could be construed differently. [A full list of sponsors of this project can be found on the NBER web site: http://www.nber.org/papers/w21178.ack.]

Schools face important policy tradeoffs in monitoring and managing student behavior. Strict discipline policies may stigmatize suspended students and expose them to the criminal justice system at a young age. On the other hand, strict discipline acts as a deterrent and limits harmful spillovers of misbehavior onto other students. This paper estimates the net impact of school discipline on student achievement, educational attainment and adult criminal activity. Using exogenous variation in school assignment caused by a large and sudden boundary change and a supplementary design based on principal switches, we show that schools with higher suspension rates have substantial negative long-run impacts. Students assigned to a school that has a one standard deviation higher suspension rate are 15 to 20 percent more likely to be arrested and incarcerated as adults. We also find negative impacts on educational attainment. The negative impacts of attending a high suspension school are largest for males and minorities.

This paper examines how elementary-aged peers affect cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes from adolescence to adulthood. We identify effects by exploiting within-school and within-neighborhood variation in the proportion of peers with an arrested parent. Results indicate exposure to these peers reduces achievement and increases antisocial behavior during middle and high school. More importantly, we estimate that a five percentage point increase in school and neighborhood crime-prone peers increases arrest rates at age 19-21 by 6.5 and 2.6 percent, respectively. Additional evidence suggests these effects are due to attending school with crime-prone peers, rather than living in the same neighborhood.

High school vocational education has a controversial history in the United States, largely due to a perceived tradeoff between teaching readily deployable occupational skills versus shunting mostly disadvantaged students away from the educational and career flexibility afforded by general academic courses. We study the effects of a nationwide high school reform in Norway that aimed to move beyond this tradeoff. Reform 94, implemented in one step in the fall of 1994, integrated more general education into the vocational track, offered vocational students a pathway to college through a supplementary semester of academic courses, and sought to improve the quality of the vocational track through greater access to apprenticeships. We identify the impacts of the reform through a difference-in-discontinuity research design, comparing students born just before and after the reform's birthdate eligibility cutoff to students born around the same cutoff in placebo years. Linking multiple administrative registries covering the entire Norwegian population, we find that the reform substantially increased initial enrollment in the vocational track, but with different subsequent outcomes for different groups. More men complete the vocational track at the expense of academic diplomas, but this has no detectable impact on college-going and leads to reduced criminal activity and higher earnings in adulthood, especially among disadvantaged men. For disadvantaged women, the initial surge in vocational enrollment leads to fewer high school dropouts and more vocational degrees with the college-prep supplement, and hence an increase in the share of college-eligible women; however, this translates into only small and insignificant increases in college completion and adult earnings. We show that men overwhelmingly pursue vocational education in higher-paying skilled trade fields, while women almost exclusively pursue vocational education in lower-paying service-based fields, which helps in interpreting some of these results. Overall, the reform succeeded at improving social mobility, particularly among men, but it somewhat exacerbated the gender gap in adult earnings.

This report details a benefit-cost analysis of the Perry Preschool program and describes the program's long-term effects. Conducted since 1962, research on the Perry Preschool program constitutes one of the strongest and best-known sources of support for the long-term efficacy of early intervention with disadvantaged children. The Perry Project collected data on 123 3- and 4-year-old disadvantaged black children (with no discernible physical handicaps) during the years of the preschool program, through the early elementary years, at age 15, and at age 19. Analysis of this data shows that the preschool program had a variety of significant positive effects on the children attending. These effects are the basis for comparing the economic benefits of one or two years of preschool. The report is divided into six sections, each dealing with a category of program effects, including the following: (1) the program and its immediate consequences, (2) elementary and secondary education, (3) higher education, (4) delinquency and crime, (5) welfare, and (6) employment and earnings. Each section discusses the data, assumptions, and methods used to evaluate costs and benefits, as well as the results. A seventh and final section presents an overall view of the benefit-cost analysis in terms of profitability. Finally, the report discusses some of the policy implications of the analysis and some of the issues that must be addressed in making public policy choices based on this evidence. (DST)

Improving the long-term life outcomes of disadvantaged youth remains a top policy priority in the United States, although identifying successful interventions for adolescents--particularly males--has proven challenging. This paper reports results from a large randomized controlled trial of an intervention for disadvantaged male youth grades 7-10 from high-crime Chicago neighborhoods. The intervention was delivered by two local non-profits and included regular interactions with a pro-social adult, after-school programming, and--perhaps the most novel ingredient--in-school programming designed to reduce common judgment and decision-making problems related to automatic behavior and biased beliefs, or what psychologists call cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). We randomly assigned 2,740 youth to programming or to a control group; about half those offered programming participated, with the average participant attending 13 sessions. Program participation reduced violent-crime arrests during the program year by 8.1 per 100 youth (a 44 percent reduction). It also generated sustained gains in schooling outcomes equal to 0.14 standard deviations during the program year and 0.19 standard deviations during the follow-up year, which we estimate could lead to higher graduation rates of 3-10 percentage points (7-22 percent). Depending on how one monetizes the social costs of crime, the benefit-cost ratio may be as high as 30:1 from reductions in criminal activity alone. [A full list of sponsors of this project can be found on NBER's web site: http://www.nber.org/papers/w19014.ack.]

This paper is about the funding status of teachers' retirement pension schemes. Its goal is to relate the accounting for the funding of these pension obligations to the endemic, systematic, and fundamentally fraudulent system of accounting our country uses to assess the financial positions of federal, state, and local government as well as many financial and non-financial private enterprises. Indeed, the paper argues that fraudulent accounting and misrepresentation is the defining element of Ponzi schemes and the real reason we find such schemes repugnant. Furthermore, any public or private enterprise that engages in fundamentally fraudulent accounting can fairly be characterized as running a Ponzi scheme. In this regard, it seems fully appropriate to characterize many, if not most, teachers' retirement plans as Ponzi schemes. (Contains 17 footnotes.)

In this paper, we review a range of rigorous research studies that estimate the average statistical relationships between children growing up in poverty and their earnings, propensity to commit crime, and quality of health later in life. We also review estimates of the costs that crime and poor health per person impose on the economy. Then we aggregate all of these average costs per poor child across the total number of children growing up in poverty in the U.S. to estimate the aggregate costs of child poverty to the U.S. economy. Our results suggest that "the costs to the U.S. associated with childhood poverty total about $500 billion per year, or the equivalent of nearly 4 percent of GDP." (Contains 35 footnotes.) [This report was prepared for the Task Force on Poverty at the Center for American Progress.]

The papers in this volume were prepared as part of an evaluation of the effects of the strict 1973 New York State drug laws. The first paper explores the effects of the laws on heroin use. It analyzes the trends of various indicators of heroin use in New York State over a period of several years. In order to isolate movements unique to New York, these trends are compared with those of comparable indicators for other East Coast states and cities that were not directly affected by the new drug laws. The second paper is on crime committed by narcotics users in Manhattan. It presents the findings of a study of changes in the magnitude of felony crimes committed by narcotics users in Manhattan between 1971 and 1975. The crimes included are all felonies which directly affect victims. The third paper explores the effects of the 1973 drug laws on the New York State Courts. It is concerned primarily with implementation of the statutes dealing with possession or sale of dangerous drugs. The last paper is on sentencing patterns under the 1973 New York State drug laws. (Author/JEL)

This paper assesses current practices in the juvenile justice field against the backdrop of priorities set forth by Congress in the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974. Part 1 describes the legislative history and major provisions of the Act. The following sections present a concise review of current, general developments in the three areas of juvenile justice: (1) delinquency prevention including recent developments (self-reported delinquency, victimization, special studies); (2) involvement of youths in the juvenile justice system including court and correctional handling of offenders and special categories of youths; and (3) alternatives to juvenile and adult system processing. A brief discussion of the major issues currently faced by the juvenile justice field, e.g., deinstitutionalization, due process, minorities, and the role of the juvenile court, follows the review. The appendix describes the activities of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention as well as several programs in four areas including the concentration of federal effort, formula grants and technical assistance, the special emphasis grant program, and the programs of the National Institute for Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. (Author/JAC)

This report summarizes demographic, economic, and social statistics on Canada's rural and small towns through 1989. Rural and small towns include areas with populations of less than 10,000 persons or a population density of less than 400 per square kilometer. The first section examines rural-urban differences in population trends and age structures as well as migration patterns between rural and urban areas. The second section focuses on the labor market and compares rural and urban Canada in terms of labor force participation, employment by industry, and unemployment rates. The last section focuses on social indicators, including rural and urban trends in family income, income inequality, education, literacy levels, and crime rates. Data indicate that while the urbanization of the Canadian population has continued virtually unabated since 1851, the rural population has exhibited steady growth in absolute terms. Although the service sector of rural and small towns has grown in both absolute and relative terms since 1976, primary employment remains concentrated in rural areas. However, the decline in agricultural employment and primary industry employment has led to a decline in the rural share of employment growth. As to social indicators, the lowest average incomes were found in rural areas and small towns with populations less than 30,000. However, rural Canada had the lowest incidence of low-income families, the least extreme income inequality rates, and the lowest crime rates. Educational levels were directly related to population size. For example, the share of the relevant population with some postsecondary education increased with the degree of urbanization. In addition, rural and small towns with populations of less than 5,000 had a higher proportion of individuals over 15 years old with less than a ninth-grade education, when compared to large urban centers. Includes 71 figures, references, and rural population statistics for Canada and its provinces during 1931-86. (LP)

Crime and vandalism on farms is possibly a symptom of rural youth delinquency and of concern to rural educators. This study of experience of Tennessee farmers with crime and vandalism is intended to provide a measure of the present social condition of rural society. Questionnaires were mailed to a weighted sample of farm operators in all Tennessee counties. The 531 usable returns represented a 75% return rate, a very high response for a lengthy mailed questionnaire. Respondents were 100% white and 94% male with a median age of 60 and a median education of high school graduate. Median farm size was 315 acres, over twice the median size of all Tennessee farms. Among responding farmers, 24% reported some vandalism on their farms in the preceding 12 months, 9% reported a burglary, and 17% reported a theft. Vandalism damage ranged as high as $8,000, with a mean of $644. Burglary losses ranged up to $15,000, with averages of $1,343 for house, $758 for barn, and $514 for other farm buildings. Losses from theft ranged up to $6,000, but were generally small. About 54% of farmers felt the crime and vandalism situation had remained the same in the last 2 years, while 42% felt it had gotten worse. Only 19% had insurance or security devices, but most took some form of protective action. Larger farm operators tend to feel that the Sheriff was not thorough in handling crimes on farms and that the court was too lenient with the convicted. Information about crime prevention came from both institutional and personal sources. Stiffer penalties and more frequent patrolling by police were endorsed for improving the situation. This report contains 23 data tables of responses to survey questions. (SV)