The Role of Ethnicity in Criminal Behavior

This paper establishes that ethnicity matters for criminal behavior. Exploiting the gender of the first-born child on fathers’ conviction rates, this is the first paper to document behavioral differences in parental criminality between ethnic groups. Based on uniquely detailed administrative data from New Zealand, we show that the effect of having a son on father’s criminal behavior is entirely driven by the white part of the population. This differential effect is confirmed using survey data from the U.S. Our results challenge the effectiveness of policies designed around majority groups