Seminar Series

Speaker

Felipe Barrera-Osorio
Associate Professor of Public Policy, Education and Economics
Vanderbilt University

Speaker

Andy Fenelon
Associate Professor, Division of Epidemiology and Community Health
University of Minnesota

Speaker

Tod Hamilton
Professor of Sociology
Princeton University

Speaker

Lindsay Yingzhi Xu
Graduate Student, Sociology
Duke University

Speaker

Warren Lowell
Graduate Student, Sanford School of Public Policy
Duke University

Speaker

Kevin J.A. Thomas
Director, Institute of Urban Policy Research and Analysis
Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies and Sociology
University of Texas at Austin

Speakers

Jennie Romich
Director, West Coast Poverty Center & Professor of Social Work
University of Washington

Speaker

Jenna Nobles
Professor of Demography
University of California Berkeley

Discovering the processes through which early life experiences affect children’s development is critically important for developing prevention and interventions for youth exposed to adversity, and also for understanding the basic science of human development and learning. Nearly all research on early experience and socio-emotional development has been anchored on specific events that have (or have not) occurred in a child’s life. Yet, there is increasing evidence that children’s perceptions of their own experiences and the meaning they construe from what has happened to them can deepen our understanding of their behavioral, health, and learning outcomes. How can we better embrace this real, albeit messy, complexity of human development? This presentation aims to serve as a catalyst for thinking about these kinds of new future research directions.

There is compelling evidence that convictions and incarceration have negative impacts on labor market outcomes. But research also shows that offenders have relatively low levels of human capital even before any contact with the justice system. Thus, accurately characterizing an offender’s employment profile and the plausible impact of the justice system has been challenging due to this population’s non-trivial involvement in both formal and informal sectors and the non-linear relationship between criminal justice involvement and economic outcomes (e.g. the first criminal record playing a critical role in life-long employment outcomes). We use high-quality longitudinal criminal justice records through CJARS integrated with extensive labor market data (IRS W-2s and ACS self-reported work) to examine the effect of criminal justice interactions on labor market outcomes in an event study framework. Employment and earnings are tracked in both formal administrative as well as self-reported employment status in survey responses, providing an opportunity to identify informality and its implications. In this research, we highlight the importance of periodicity of criminal justice events and the role of shifts to informal employment, particularly when using event studies and administrative data.