- Title
- Prison-Based Education and Re-Entry into the Mainstream Labor Market
- Author(s)
- John H. Tyler John Tyler (Brown University and NBER)
- Jeffrey R. Kling Jeffrey Kling (Princeton University and NBER)
- Abstract
- We estimate the post-release economic effects of participation in prison-based General Educational Development (GED) programs using a panel of earnings records and a rich set of individual information from administrative data in the state of Florida. Fixed effects estimates of the impact of participating in the GED education program show post-release quarterly earnings gains of about 15 percent for program participants relative to observationally similar nonparticipants. We also show, however, that these earnings gains accrue only to racial/ethnic minority offenders and any GED-related earnings gains for this group seem to fade in the third year after release from prison. Estimates comparing offenders who obtained a GED to those who participated in GED-related prison education programs but left prison without a GED show no systematic evidence of an independent impact of the credential itself on post-release quarterly earnings.
- Creation Date
- 2004-07
- Section URL ID
- IRS
- Paper Number
- 489
- URL
- https://dataspace.princeton.edu/bitstream/88435/dsp01zk51vg782/1/489.pdf
- File Function
- Jel
- J31, J38
- Keyword(s)
- Incarceration, GED, Earnings
- Suppress
- false
- Series
- 1