Friday, May 7, 2010

short criminals

A recent NBER working paper looks at the relationship between a person's hight and criminal activity in the late 19th century. Using prison records, they show that (1) inmates tend to be shorter than the average person in the population, and (2) the likelihood of being a criminal is decreasing in height. That is, the taller someone is, the less likely they end up behind bars. They argue that these results are consistent with taller people having a labor market advantage.
The paper was written by Howard Bodenhorn (Clemson), Carolyn Moehling (Yale), and Gregory N. Price (Morehouse). Download it here.

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