Men's Incarceration and Women's Labor Market Outcomes

Abstract

The prevalence of men's incarceration in the United States has important unintended consequences for women. Two early studies find positive external effects of men's incarceration on women's labor market outcomes in general. However, very little is known about the labor market outcomes of women directly affected by men's incarceration. This study evaluates how women's labor market outcomes change when a male partner is currently incarcerated. It finds substantial and robust evidence that a male partner's current incarceration lowers women's weekly earnings at extensive and intensive margins, while raising women's unemployment odds at the extensive margin. These negative consequences on women's labor market outcomes warrant further policy attention.

HIGHLIGHTS

• Women are markedly affected by the incarceration of their male partners.

• Less is known about how a male partner behind bars affects a woman in the labor market.

• Having a male partner behind bars and his time served both lower a woman's earnings.

• Having a male partner behind bars raises the likelihood of a woman's unemployment.

• These losses are statistically comparable to losses under the Great Recession.

KEYWORDS:

• Incarceration
• earnings
• labor supply
• gender

JEL Codes:

• J2
• J3
• K4

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author would like to thank the editor, associate editor, and two anonymous reviewers for excellent suggestions for improving this paper. I am grateful to the Population Studies and Training Center at Brown University, which receives funding from the NIH (P2C HD041020), for general support.

SUPPLEMENTAL DATA

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1080/13545701.2021.1942510.

Notes

1 Women directly affected by male incarceration include those who have had their spouse, cohabiting partner, or child’s father incarcerated.

2 The upper-bound national average of a fifteen-minute in-state phone call from jail is approximately $12 (Wagner and Jones 2019).

3 For example, a woman's ability to pay for strong legal representation may help explain a male partner's current incarceration status.

4 This probit equation is similar to equation (3) but includes the vector of instrumental variables, Z, from equation (2).

5 These cities are: Indianapolis, IN; Austin, TX; Boston, MA; Milwaukee, WI; Baltimore, MD; Richmond, VA; Corpus Christi, TX; Toledo, OH; New York, NY; Pittsburgh, PA; Nashville, TN; Norfolk, VA; Jacksonville, FL; San Antonio, TX; Philadelphia, PA; Chicago, IL; Newark, NJ; Oakland, CA; Detroit, MI; and San Jose, CA.

6 Because there are no data on the month in which the male partner was incarcerated, time served or incarceration length is determined by subtracting the year of the male partner's jail or prison admission from the year of the mother's interview.

7 The average unemployment rate for Black, Hispanic, and white women before the Great Recession (1999–2007) was 8.7, 7.2, and 4.2 percent, respectively.

8 The CIDI interview short form uses a fraction of the complete set of CIDI questions, then computes from the responses the probability that the respondent would be positively diagnosed with depression or anxiety if given a complete CIDI interview.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Terry-Ann Craigie

Terry-Ann Craigie is Associate Professor of Economics at Smith College and the Economics Fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law. Her recent research examines social and economic inequities within the context of mass incarceration, criminal justice reform, and the labor market. In 2013, she was selected as a Self-Sufficiency Research Clearinghouse (SSRC) Emerging Scholar. Her research has also been supported by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.