The Effect of Criminal Records on Access to Employment

摘要

In recent years, considerable policy attention has focused on the expansion of employment opportunities for people with criminal records. These efforts are motivated by the premise— supported by observational, survey, and experimental research—that applicants with records are disfavored by employers (see Schmitt and Warner 2010 for a review). Because the poor and minorities disproportionately have criminal records, these employment challenges may exacerbate existing socioeconomic and racial inequalities. Furthermore, job access for people with records can reduce criminal recidivism, potentially improving public safety (see, for example, Yelowitz and Bollinger 2015). This study offers the largest-to-date field experiment testing the effect of criminal records on employment access. It confirms that even fairly minor felony records have large negative effects on employer callbacks across a variety of subsamples defined by applicant and job characteristics. The effect on labor market access may ultimately be limited by employers' voluntary or mandatory elimination of the criminal record box on job applications. Although the policy concerns associated with Ban-the-Box are complicated (Agan and Starr 2016 and Doleac and Hansen 2016 explore unintended racial consequences), our results here support its basic premise: when employers inquire about them, felony convictions reduce access to job opportunities.