CrimeThe United States
Things are remarkably similar in the United States, except
that there is more crime in the United States. By the age of
24/25, 21.9 % of young people have a criminal conviction.
But the pattern of who gets convicted is extraordinarily sim-
ilar to that in Britain.
Our evidence on the United States comes from the Na-
tional Longitudinal Survey of Youth’s Child and Young
Adult cohort (CNLSY), which provides data on a sample of
people born between 1975 and 1988.^6 For each individual
we know whether they were convicted of a crime by the age
of 24/25, and we also have their childhood outcomes at age
10/11. In addition we know the same detail on the person’s
mother as in Britain.
So we can again estimate how childhood outcomes affect
Table 7.1. How the probability of conviction is predicted
by childhood problemsUnitsUK (BCS)
(Prob. by age 30)USA (NLSY)
(Prob. by age 24– 25)Intellectual
problems
(age 10)
SD (index) 0.012 (.004) 0.030 (.011)Behavioral
problems
(age 10)
SD (index) 0.034 (.004) 0.062 (.013)Emotional
problems
(age 10)
SD (index) −0.023 (.004) −0.024 (.013)