Closing the Research Gap on the Social Costs of Incarceration by Extending the NLSY79 Data Infrastructure

Contact with the criminal justice system has implications for post-release outcomes, including unemployment, earnings, and health. Two nationally-representative longitudinal studies—the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79) and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97) – have been essential to researchers. However, they currently do not differentiate between prison and jail incarceration. Sociologists Christopher Wildeman and Martin Eiermann and criminologist Robert Apel will create new variable in the NLSY79 and the NLSY97 that will allow researchers to distinguish between jailed and imprisoned respondents. They will work with the Bureau of Labor Statistics the National Opinion Research Center, and the Center for Human Resource Research at Ohio State University for their project.