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Keeping children in school longer also keeps them off the street as it gives them
something to do with their time and out of an environment which may be conducive to criminal
opportunities. Another effect of school noted in Lochner and Moretti (1997) is that more years of
schooling has been shown to make one more risk averse and less impatient, characteristics that
may also be associated with declines in crimes. Increased risk averseness, along with the higher
opportunity cost associated to time spent in jail, would decrease the benefits of crime at its
current payoff level and therefore the number of crimes should be seen to diminish.
Lochner and Moretti (2007) estimate that in the United States, high school graduation has
the biggest effect on violent crimes. As violent crimes are the most costly type of crime, reducing
their number has enormous benefits. They estimate that a one year increase in the average years
of schooling of the population will reduce murder and assault by 30 per cent, motor vehicle theft
by 20 per cent, arson by 13 per cent and burglary and larceny by approximately 6 per cent. They
also estimate that a one per cent increase in the male high school graduation rates would save as
much as $1.4 billion (2003 US dollars) annually as a result of social savings from the reduction
in crime.
Improving educational attainment and increasing high school graduation rates might well
be a more effective crime reducing strategy than increasing the size of the police force. By
increasing risk averseness and the opportunity cost of jail time as well as by diminishing the need
for committing crime, encouraging the achievement of higher levels of educational attainment
appears to be an effective policy to fight crime. In addition, the benefits from schooling have
much larger long run benefits as higher education encourages one to become a contributing
member of society and can potentially reduce social costs associated with crime such as policing
costs, incarceration costs, legal costs and correctional services costs.
iii. Births/ Family Structure
There are two ways in which educational attainment and family structure interact. On the
one hand, family environment greatly influences educational attainment. For example, children
who grow up in single parent families are less likely to achieve higher levels of educational
attainment than children in two-parent homes. This may be due to the fact that there are lower
expectations from single parents, so children are more likely to take less interest in school. These
children who disengage themselves from school at an early stage are more likely to develop low
cognitive abilities, as schooling does not stimulate them, and to eventually become high school
dropouts. Lower cognitive ability is also associated with a higher probability of incarceration and
increased likeliness of having children at a young age. It is, therefore, very important to target
children in this situation with quality schooling to help them overcome their predisposition to
these negative behaviours.
On the other hand, high school dropouts are also more likely to have out-of-wedlock
births. In 2000, 10 per cent of babies in the United States were born to unmarried teenage
mothers (Heckman and Masterov, 2007). This situation of children being born into teenage
single parent households only perpetuates the cycle of the disadvantaged environment. Teenaged
mothers, who themselves generally had lower levels of cognitive ability and were uninterested