Not All Crime Is Created Equal: Noncognitive Analyses of Criminal Behavior

Abstract

When did all crime become attached with a label reading “one size fits all”? Literature shows that noncognitive skill education effectively reduces crime rates, or at least pushes them in the right direction. Thus, this research suggests that to reduce crime, policy should focus on increasing noncognitive skill education. But what if all crime is not the same? In this paper, we set out to find whether every crime is the same or should be treated as the same in the context of noncognitive skills. We access data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 and model outcomes through OLS and Household Fixed Effects regressions. Our results show that while individual characteristics play a small role, family effects may make the most impact on the association between noncognitive skills and types of crime.