Effects of family background on crime participation and criminal earnings: an empirical analysis of siblings

This study exploits the sibling structure of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth data to measure the degree to which family background explains the variance in the propensity to engage in criminal activities and in the intensity and success of crime participation as measured by the level of criminal earnings. A multiple-equation model whose reduced form disturbances are connected by a common unobservable variable having a variance-components structure is developed and estimated. Estimation results indicate a high level of association (net of observable measures of family background) between the unobserved factors affecting siblings' propensity to engage in criminal activities in a family, with estimated intra-family correlations ranging from 0.44 to 0.55. Sharing a common family background explains around 25% of the variance of the unconditional criminal income. The results suggest that ignoring family background effects leads to a significant upward bias in the effects of race and education on the propensity to engage in income-generating crime.Este estudo usa dados do National Longitudinal Survey of Youth para medir a extensão pela qual interações sociais de família explicam a variância na probabilidade de participação em crime e na intensidade e sucesso em atividades criminais. A estimação é baseada em um mo-delo de equações múltiplas cujas perturbações são interligadas por uma variável inobservável comum. A virtude do método proposto é usar dados referentes a irmãos - que compartilham as mesmas características maternas e paternas em relação a fatores de família que possivelmente influenciam a sua própria decisão de engajar em atividades ilegais - para estimar o efeito do background familiar na decisão de participar em crime. Os resultados empíricos indicam um alto nível de correlação entre fatores inobserváveis medindo efeitos de família e a propensão de irmãos em participar de atividades criminosas (0.44 a 0.55). Efeitos de família explicam 25% da variância em renda criminal. Finalmente, os resultados sugerem que estimativas que ignoram o background familiar induzem vieses significantes no efeito de variáveis, tais como raça e educação na propensão de jovens a participar de crimes patrimoniais

Parental Marital Disruption, Family Type, and Transfers to Disabled Elderly Parents

This paper examines the family variables that affect intergenerational living arrangements and adult children's time and cash transfers to their unpartnered disabled elderly parents. The family variables we examine include parental marital status, parental marital history, whether the index child is a step child or a biological child of the parent, and whether the index child's siblings are step children or biological children of the parent. Using data from the Health and Retirement Studies - Asset and Health Dynamics Among the Oldest Old (HRS-AHEAD) surveys, we estimate the joint probabilities that an adult child provides time and/or cash transfers to a parent and analyze a five-level categorical variable capturing parent–child living arrangements. Parameter estimates suggest significant detrimental effects of parental divorce and step relationship on time transfers and on the probability of coresidence with the index child. The composition of the index child's sibling network also affects transfers and living arrangement choices of adult children. Our findings suggest that demographic changes are weakening the traditional role of the family as a support network. Because more recent cohorts of elderly persons have experienced substantially higher rates of divorce, remarriage, and step parenthood than the cohort considered in this study, our findings raise concerns about the future availability of family care.long-term care, intergenerational transfers, aging, family

Efficiency in Family Bargaining: Living Arrangements and Caregiving Decisions of Adult Children and Disabled Elderly Parents

In this paper, we use a two-stage bargaining model to analyze the living arrangement of a disabled elderly parent and the assistance provided to the parent by her adult children. The first stage determines the living arrangement: the parent can live in a nursing home, live alone in the community, or live with any child who has invited coresidence. The second stage determines the assistance provided by each child in the family. Working by backward induction, we first calculate the level of assistance that each child would provide to the parent in each possible living arrangement. Using these calculations, we then analyze the living arrangement that would emerge from the first stage game. A key assumption of our model is that family members cannot or will not make binding agreements at the first stage regarding transfers at the second stage. Because coresidence is likely to reduce the bargaining power of the coresident child relative to her siblings, coresidence may fail to emerge as the equilibrium living arrangement even when it is Pareto efficient. That is, the outcome of the two-stage game need not be Pareto efficient.

Efficiency in Family Bargaining: Living Arrangements and Caregiving Decisions of Adult Children and Disabled Elderly Parents

In this paper, we use a two-stage bargaining model to analyze the living arrangement of a disabled elderly parent and the assistance provided to the parent by her adult children. The first stage determines the living arrangement: the parent can live in a nursing home, live alone in the community, or live with any child who has invited coresidence. The second stage determines the assistance provided by each child in the family. Working by backward induction, we first calculate the level of assistance that each child would provide to the parent in each possible living arrangement. Using these calculations, we then analyze the living arrangement that would emerge from the first stage game. A key assumption of our model is that family members cannot or will not make binding agreements at the first stage regarding transfers at the second stage. Because coresidence is likely to reduce the bargaining power of the coresident child relative to her siblings, coresidence may fail to emerge as the equilibrium living arrangement even when it is Pareto efficient. That is, the outcome of the two-stage game need not be Pareto efficient.

Long-Term Care of the Disabled Elderly: Do Children Increase Caregiving by Spouses?

Do adult children affect the care elderly parents provide each other? We develop two models in which the anticipated behavior of adult children provides incentives for elderly parents to increase care for their disabled spouses. The "demonstration effect" postulates that adult children learn from a parent's example that family caregiving is appropriate behavior. The "punishment effect" postulates that adult children may punish parents who fail to provide spousal care by not providing future care for the nondisabled spouse when necessary. Thus, joint children act as a commitment mechanism, increasing the probability that elderly spouses will provide care for each other; stepchildren with weak attachments to their parents provide weaker incentives for spousal care than joint children. Using data from the HRS, we find evidence that spouses provide more care when they have children with strong parental attachment.

Incentivos de mercado e comportamento criminoso: uma análise econômica dinâmica

Este artigo formaliza e estima um modelo econômico de otimização dinâmica aplicado ao comportamento criminoso. 0 objetivo principal do artigo é determinar a extensão pela qual incentivos de mercado, em contraste com fatores relacionados a família e outras formas de controle social, influenciam a dinâmica das carreiras criminais. 0 argumento chave do estudo enfatiza que o processo decisório relativo a escolha tanto do padrão da carreira criminal quanto domomento de seu término depende criticamente de fatores gerais e específicos que afetam o ciclo-vital doretorno líquido associado com as duas opções de atividade: a legal constituida e a delinquencial. A análise dos dados coletados ao nível individual pelo "National Longitudinal Survey of Youth" confirma a hipótese central resultante do modelo teórico.This paper presents and estimates a dynamic economic model of criminal involvement. The paper's main goal is to determine the extent to which market incentives, as distinct from background and other constraints, influence the dynamics of criminal careers. It is argued that career profile choices and desistance decisions depend critically upon general and math-specific factors affecting the life-cycle pattern of net legal and illegal rewards. An analysis of individual data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth supports that expectation

Intergenerational Household Formation, Female Labor Supply and Informal Caregiving: A Bargaining Approach

Children's provision of in-kind services to their elderly parents (informal caregiving) represents an important form of economic transfers to the elderly. In this paper, we develop and estimate a joint model of informal caregiving and labor force participation decisions of adult daughters who have a frail elderly parent in a broader framework of intergenerational household formation. Parent and daughter agree to a Nash bargaining rule as the solution to the household formation and intrahousehold decision making process. However, rather than severed relationships, the threat point is given by a noncooperative equilibrium defined in terms of voluntary contributions toward a public good, the parental "well-being." Maximum likelihood parameter estimates derived from the simultaneous, multiequation, endogenous switching model are generally consistent with expectations. Our results indicate that competing demands on daughters' time reduce both coresidence and informal caregiving. We also find that intergenerational coresidence is an important mode of assistance to elderly persons. A simulation based on the estimated parameters suggests that public programs designed to meet the long-term care needs of elderly persons by subsidizing formal home care services may have substantial effects on intergenerational living and care arrangement decisions.