Areas of Expertise

• Labor and Employment
• Race & Ethnicity
• Criminal Justice
• Employment Discrimination
• Labor Economics
• Racial Inequality
• Urban Economics

Biography

Steve Raphael received his Ph.D. in economics from UC Berkeley in 1996. His primary fields of concentration are labor and urban economics. Raphael has authored several research projects investigating the relationship between racial segregation in housing markets and the relative employment prospects of African-Americans. Raphael has also written theoretical and empirical papers on the economics of discrimination, the role of access to transportation in determining employment outcomes, the relationship between unemployment and crime, the role of peer influences on youth behavior, the effect of trade unions on wage structures, and homelessness.

Website

• Personal Homepage

Working Papers

• Reconciling National and Regional Estimates of the Effect of Immigration on U.S. Labor Markets: The

  Co-author: Lucas Ronconi

  GSPP Working Paper: GSPP08-004 (June 2008)

  Abstract

  In this paper, we reconcile the disparity between regional and national level estimates of the effect of immigration on native earnings. The reconciliation derives from the fact that existing national level studies fail to adequately control for changes in other determinants of the wage structure that correspond closely with the skill distribution of immigrant shocks. We focus specifically on the effect of accounting for incarceration trends. Over the past thirty years, an increasing proportion of low skilled native workers have served time in prison, a development that has arguably harmed their employment prospects. We show that the fraction of a given education-experience group that is immigrant is strongly correlated with the fraction of native born workers in the demographic group that is institutionalized. Holding constant incarceration trends considerably diminishes the estimated magnitude of the reduced-form relationship between native labor market outcomes and the fraction in their skill cell that is immigrant.

  An alternative interpretation of these findings offered by Borjas, Grogger, and Hansen (2006) is that immigration-induced wage declines have pushed more men into criminal activity which, in turn, has increased the incarceration rate. The authors present a model whereby the reduced form effect of immigration on incarceration reflects the product of (1) the effect of immigration on wages and (2) the elasticity of labor demand in the crime sector. The latter elasticity gauges the extent to which the local crime market is able to absorb additional offenders as the quality of legitimate work opportunities (as measured by wages) diminishes. While national level correlations presented by the authors are consistent with this interpretation, we show that the state level results are not. Despite a sizable and statistically significant negative reduced-form effect of immigrant penetration on wages in state-level panel regressions, there is no statistically significant relationship between state-level immigrant shocks and state-level incarceration rates - i.e., despite an identifiable dose to state-level wages, there is no incarceration response. Estimates of the elasticity of demand in the criminal sector using both the original state-level estimates presented in Borjas, Grogger, and Hansen (2006) as well as our replication and simple alternative specification of these regressions are essentially zero. Thus, we conclude that immigration has had no impact on criminal activity among natives operating through labor market competition.

• Neighborhoods, Economic Self-Sufficiency, and the MTO

  Co-author: Steven RaphaelJohn Quigley

  GSPP Working Paper: (October 2007)

  Abstract

  The Moving to Opportunity (MTO) Program, undertaken in five metropolitan areas (MSAs)
  during 1994-1998, has produced the only evidence about the effects of neighborhood conditions
  on social outcomes which is based upon experimental observation. The results of this experiment
  provide no support at all for a link between neighborhood conditions and the economic self
  sufficiency of adults. This contrasts sharply with a prior body of social science evidence
  suggesting that the spatial segregation of minority workers from concentrations of urban
  employment leads to reduced earnings, employment, and minority welfare. We assess the
  importance of the experimental findings.

  To establish a prior about the expected effects of the experimental treatments in these five
  MSAs, we estimate a simple statistical model of the effects of spatial isolation from job
  concentrations on the employment levels of black workers. We then analyze whether the
  experiment could have reasonably been expected to detect effects of this magnitude. We
  conclude that the experimental treatment observed ex post – a reduction of the neighborhood
  poverty rate for experimental subjects from the 96th percentile of the poverty distribution to the
  88th percent – could not be expected to yield detectable effects. We conclude that the
  experimental results of the MTO are uninformative about the potential effects of neighborhood
  isolation on the employment levels of low-income black workers.

• Understanding the Causes and Labor Market Consequences of the Steep Increase in U.S. Incarceration

  GSPP Working Paper: (July 2007)

  Abstract

  The United States currently incarcerates its residents at a rate that is greater than every other
  country in the world. Aggregating the state and federal prison populations as well as inmates in
  local jails, there were 737 inmates per 100,000 U.S. residents in 2005. This compares with a
  world average of 166 per 100,000 and an average among European Community member states of
  135. This chapter asks and answers three questions pertaining to U.S. incarceration trends and
  their impacts on social inequality. First, why has the U.S. incarceration rate increased so much
  in recent decades? Second, what is the incidence of the increase in U.S. incarceration rates?
  Finally, how does serving time impact one’s employment prospects? I find that the lion’s share
  (over 80 percent) of the 400 percent increase in incarceration rates is attributable to changes in
  sentencing and parole policy that have increased the incarcerated population along both the
  extensive and intensive margins. The incidence of this increase has been disproportionately, if
  almost entirely, born by less educated, prime age, minority men. Incarcerated men fail to
  accumulate work experience while doing time and face substantial stigma and extremely wary
  employers post-release. Not surprisingly, those demographic groups experiencing the largest
  increases in incarceration over the past few decades have also experienced sharp declines in
  employment and earnings.

• The Impact of Incarceration on the Employment Outcomes of Former Inmates

  GSPP Working Paper: (July 2007)

  Abstract

  This chapter documents recent incarceration trends, discusses the evidence pertaining to the
  employment effects of serving time, and discusses several policy options designed to limit the
  adverse collateral consequences of corrections policy on poor minority communities. Regarding
  policy proposals, I advocate for (1) the elimination of federal bans on the participation of certain
  convicted felons from participation in various public assistance programs, (2) for a
  rationalization of federal, state, and local government employment bans that allows for greater
  consideration of the particulars of individual cases, (3) for legislative guidance on how
  employers may and may not consider the criminal history record of an applicant, and (4) for state
  programs that incentivize the expunging of criminal history records for former inmates that
  exhibit sustained desistance from criminal activity and that meet other benchmarks of
  responsible post-release behavior. I also assess the likely effects on crime of reducing the U.S.
  incarceration rate below current levels. I conclude that incarceration has increased along the
  extensive margin to such an extent that there are certainly many men who are currently
  sentenced to serve time that pose a minimal threat to society.

• Why Are So Many Americans in Prison?

  Co-author: Michael A. Stoll

  GSPP Working Paper: (March 2007)

  Abstract

  We focus primarily on the growth in state prison incarceration though we often analyze
  variation in the overall incarceration rate inclusive of federal prisons and jails. Over the last two
  and a half decades, we observe two principal changes that bear directly on growth in the
  incarceration rate and that provides a framework for categorizing various behavioral and policy
  contributors to incarceration growth and for attributing responsibility among these various
  causes. First, conditional on the violation sending one to prison, the average time one can expect
  to serve until release has increased considerably. Interestingly, increases in time-served are not
  readily observable in the aggregate. That is to say, the average prisoner entering today will not
  serve more time on a given prison spell than the average prisoner admitted 25 years ago.
  Moreover, observable sentences handed down by the criminal justice system (for example, the
  maximum sentence on a felony conviction) are no longer today than in the past.

• The Effects of Labor Market Competition with Immigrants on the Wages and Employment and Natives

  Co-author: Lucas Ronconi

  GSPP Working Paper: (January 2007)

  Abstract

  In this paper, we provide an overview of the current debate among economists pertaining to
  the effects of recent immigration on the earnings and employment of native born workers. Since
  much of this debate revolves around methodological differences in research design, we devote
  much of our effort to discussing the various strategies that researchers have used to isolate
  immigrant competition effects, and the costs and benefits of each. Our overall assessment is that
  the central tendency of the research evidence suggests that recent immigration has had only a
  modest effect on the labor market prospects of native born Americans. At the conclusion of the
  paper, we offer several potential hypotheses that may explain this lack of a large impact.

• How Much Crime Reduction Does the Marginal Prisoner Buy?

  Co-author: Rucker JohnsonSteven Raphael

  GSPP Working Paper: (December 2006)

  Abstract

  We present new evidence on the effect of aggregate changes in incarceration on changes
  in crime that accounts for the potential simultaneous relationship between incarceration
  and crime. Our principal innovation is that we develop an instrument for future changes
  in incarceration rates based on the theoretically predicted dynamic adjustment path of the
  aggregate incarceration rate in response to a shock (from whatever source) to prison
  entrance or exit transition probabilities. Given that incarceration rates adjust to
  permanent changes in behavior with a dynamic lag (given that only a fraction of
  offenders are apprehended in any one period), one can identify variation in incarceration
  that is not contaminated by contemporary changes in criminal behavior. We isolate this
  variation and use it to tease out the causal effect of incarceration on crime. Using state
  level data for the United States covering the period from 1978 to 2004, we find crimeprison elasticities that are considerably larger than those implied by OLS estimates. For the entire time period, we find average crime-prison effects with implied elasticities of
  between -0.06 and -0.11 for violent crime and between -0.15 and -0.21 for property
  crime. We also present results for two sub-periods of our panel: 1978 to 1990 and 1991
  to 2004. Our IV estimates for the earlier time period suggest much larger crime-prison
  effects, with elasticity estimates consistent with those presented in Levitt (1996) who
  analyzes a similar time period yet with an entirely different identification strategy. For
  the latter time period, however, the effects of changes in prison on crime are much
  smaller. Our results indicate that recent increases in incarceration have generated much
  less bang-per-buck in terms of crime reduction.

• Socioeconomic Differences in Household Automobile Ownership Rates: Implications for Evacuation Poli

  Co-authors: Alan Berube, Elizabeth Deakin

  GSPP Working Paper: (June 2006)

  Abstract

  The devastation wrought by hurricane Katrina laid bare many of the disparities that continue to separate Americans by race and class. One disparity that was immediately apparent in Katrina’s aftermath concerned the size and composition of the area’s populations that lacked access to an automobile. These households, largely dependent on the limited emergency public transportation available to evacuate the city in advance of the storm, were the most likely to be left behind. In New Orleans, this population seemed quite large in size – and overwhelmingly black. In this paper, we document differences in car-ownership rates between racial and socioeconomic groups. We present patterns for the nation as a whole as well as for the preKatrina New Orleans metropolitan area using data from the 2000 5% Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) of the U.S. Census of Population and Housing. We also present estimates of the number of people for all U.S. metropolitan areas that reside in a household without access to an automobile. Finally, we explore the relationship between residential housing segregation and spatial proximity to other households without access to automobiles among African-Americans.

• The Deinstitutionalization of the Mentally Ill & Growth in the U.S. Prison Population: 1971 to 1996

  GSPP Working Paper: (September 2000)

  Abstract

  This paper tests for a relationship between the size of the population institutionalized in state and
  county mental hospitals and the size of state prison populations. The analysis exploits inter-state
  differences in the pace of deinstitutionalization to identify this relationship. While mental hospital
  populations declined nation-wide, decreases in hospitalization rates vary considerably from state to
  state. To the extent that the deinstitutionalized mentally ill transfer from mental hospitals to prisons,
  there should be a negative within-state correlations between these populations. Using standard panel
  data techniques, I probe the robustness of this relationship. I find strong negative effects of
  hospitalization rates on prison incarceration rates. The estimation results imply that
  deinstitutionalization between 1971 and 1996 is directly responsible for 48,000 to 148,000 of the
  inmates in state prison systems in 1996. This accounts for 4.5 to 14 percent of the total prison
  population for this year and for roughly 28 to 86 percent of prison inmates suffering from mental
  illness.

• Neighborhoods, Economic Self Sufficiency, and the MTO Program

  Co-author: John QuigleySteven Raphael

  GSPP Working Paper: (May 2008)