Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Avoiding the criminal justice system is critical to the life success of children from low-income families and urban environments. However, most evaluations of private school choice programs have examined their effects on standardized math and reading test scores. Do private school choice programs affect nonacademic outcomes such as adult criminal activity and paternity suits? In this study, we use student-level data to estimate the effects of exposure to the longest-standing modern-day voucher program in the United States, the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP), on adult criminal activity and paternity suits. Using propensity score matching, we find that exposure to the program in 8th or 9th grade is associated with lower rates of conviction for criminal activity and lower rates of paternity suits by the time students are 25 to 28 years old. The benefits associated with program participation tend to be largest for males and students with lower levels of academic achievement at baseline.

Only one other study exists of the effect of a private school choice program on the criminal behavior of young adults. Using student-level data from a longitudinal evaluation of the MPCP, the authors found that sustained participation in the MPCP reduces the likelihood of a student engaging in criminal activity by age 22 to 25. Because most significant effects in that analysis were dependent on students’ persistence in the choice program, and that persistence might be driven by unmeasured student and family characteristics correlated with the likelihood of committing crimes, the researchers could not conclusively rule out post-match selection bias as the reason for their results.

We build on the previous study in at least five important ways: (1) we look up the cumulative record of risky behaviors over three years later than the original study – in the fall of 2018 – when the students were 25 to 28 years old; (2) we use “exposure to the program in 2006” as our variable of interest in an intent-to-treat analysis that is free of post-match selection bias; (3) instead of simply examining the changes in probabilities of being convicted of any crimes, we track the counts of each type of criminal behavior to use a more holistic approach with more analytic power; (4) we include additional categories of outcomes such at the total amount of fees students were assessed by the state and the total number of paternity suits the students experienced by the fall of 2018; and, (5) we examine heterogeneous effects based on gender and initial academic ability.