Public Policy and the Income Distribution

8. The Socioeconomic Status of Black Males: The Increasing Importance of Incarceration

Over the past three decades, the average socioeconomic status of African American males has deteriorated, absolutely and relative to men from other racial and ethnic groups. Despite gains in relative earnings immediately following passage of the Civil Rights Act, the relative earnings of black men have stagnated since the mid-1970s (Bound and Freeman 1992). In addition, employment rates among noninstitutionalized black men have declined markedly, with pronounced declines for the relatively less-educated (Holzer and Offner 2002). Concurrent with these adverse labor-market trends is a phenomenal increase in the proportion of black men involved in one form or another with the criminal justice system. Between 1970 and 2000, the proportion of working-age black males who are institutionalized increased from 3 to 8 percent. Over the same time period, the proportion of black males who have ever served a prison sentence increased from approximately 7 to 17 percent (Bonczar 2003). For both measures, these increases were considerably larger for certain subgroups of the black male population, such as the relatively lesseducated and the young.1 For the increasing proportion of black men who are either currently incarcerated or have been incarcerated in the past, this fact is likely to worsen their relative socioeconomic status. Having served a prison sentence worsens one’s labor-market prospects for a variety of reasons, and thus aggravates stubborn racial differences in Chapter 8 The Socioeconomic Status of Black Males: The Increasing Importance of Incarceration STEVEN RAPHAEL employment and pay. In addition, the interruption of life represented by a prison sentence and the consequent lengthy absence of African American males from their spouses, partners, and children is likely to hamper family formation and hasten the dissolution of existing family units. Given the high fraction of black men with felonious criminal history records, these collateral consequences of incarceration are quickly becoming an increasingly important source of racial inequality in the United States. In fact, one might argue that in light of the potentially permanent consequences of a spell of incarceration , the high incarceration rate among black males is perhaps one of the chief barriers to their socioeconomic progress. How important is the increasing incarceration of black males in determining their average socioeconomic status in the United States? This chapter attempts to answer that question: by documenting national trends in the proportion of black males who are institutionalized and the way this proportion varies by age and level of educational attainment; by analyzing data concerning employer demand for ex-inmates; and by using U.S. census data to assess whether increasing incarceration rates provide a possible explanation for the drastic declines in employment rates observed among noninstitutionalized black males. Changes in Incarceration Rates, 1970 to 2000 This section documents incarceration trends over the past three decades. I focus on two principal measures of incarceration: the proportion of men institutionalized at a given point in time and the proportion of men who are either currently incarcerated or have served time at some point in the past. The large fraction of currently incarcerated black men suggests that a much larger fraction of this population is in a nonproductive status than the traditional focus on the employment rates of the noninstitutionalized would suggest. In addition, the increasing proportion of black men with previous prison experience indicates that many noninstitutionalized blacks face the same employment barriers as ex-offenders. Documenting Trends in Institutionalization from the U.S. Census The decennial Census of Population and Housing enumerates both the institutionalized as well as the noninstitutionalized population. The Public Use Microdata Samples (PUMS) for each census includes 320 Public Policy and the Income Distribution a flag for the institutionalized as well as micro-level information on age, education, race, and all other items that noninstitutionalized long-form respondents supply. Within the institutionalized population one can separately identify individuals residing in nonmilitary institutions. This category includes inmates of federal and state prisons , local jail inmates, residents of in-patient mental hospitals, and residents of other non-aged institutions. I use residence in a nonmilitary institution as the principal indicator of incarceration.2 To gauge the validity of using the census data in this manner, I compared estimates of the institutionalized population from the census to estimates of the incarcerated populations from other sources, shown in figure 8.1. The figure presents a comparison of the number of institutionalized adult black, white, and Hispanic males from the 2000 census to counts...