Neighborhood Drug Crime and Young Males' Job Accessibility

Abstract

There has been renewed interest in the possible use of employment programs for disadvantaged male youth as a policy to reduce drug crime, but little evidence exists on the youth employment/drug crime relationship and theory suggests that these programs may increase rather than decrease the amount of drug crime. In this paper, panel data at the neighborhood level are used to investigate the relationship between drug crime and young males' intraurban job accessibility. Results obtained from models that control for time and fixed effects, as well as other potential sources of bias, suggest that modest improvements in job access can substantially reduce the amount of drug crime within poor inner-city neighborhoods. Copyright by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.