Program on Children.

• Position: Conferences

The NBER's Program on Children, directed by Research Associate Jonathan Gruber of MIT, met in Cambridge on April 4. They discussed these papers:

Lance Lochner, NBER and University of Rochester, "A Theoretical and Empirical Study of Individual Perceptions of the Criminal Justice System"

Robert Kaestner, NBER and University of Illinois, and Lisa Dubay and Genevieve Kenney, Urban Institute, "Medicaid Managed Care and Infant Health: A National Evaluation"

Phillip Levine, NBER and Wellesley College, "The Impact of Social Policy and Economic Activity Throughout the Fertility Decision Tree"

Eric A. Hanushek, NBER and Stanford University; John F Kain, University of Texas; and Steven Rivkin, Amherst College, "New Evidence about Brown vs. Board of Education: The Complex Effects of School Racial Composition on Achievement" (NBER Working Paper No. 8741)

Brian Jacob, Harvard University, "Making the Grade: The Impact of Test-Based Accountability in Schools"

Lochner examines perceptions of the criminal justice system held by young males. He uses data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 Cohort and the National Youth Survey and asks how perceptions respond to individual information about the probability of arrest and thus affect criminal behavior. He finds that young males who engage in crime but are not arrested revise their perceived probability of arrest downward, while those who are arrested revise their probability upwards. The perceived probability of arrest then is linked to subsequent criminal behavior -- youth with a lower perceived probability of arrest are significantly more likely to engage in crime in subsequent periods. Information about the arrests of others, local neighborhood conditions, and official arrest rates have little impact on the perceptions of any given individual about his own arrest rate. Further, young males typically report a higher probability of arrest than is actually observed in official arrest rates. But there do not appear to be substantial differences in perceptions across race and ethnicity for most of the crimes studied. These findings suggest that heterogeneity in perceptions may be an important cause of differences in criminal participation across individuals. Furthermore, those perceptions can be influenced by the justice system. Policies enacted to change the actual probability of arrest will have heterogeneous effects on individuals with different crime and arrest histories, but increases in true...