Abstract
Advocates of youth sports programs, including the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, argue that athletic competition reduces crime among participants, thereby generating external social benefits. However, next to nothing is known about the impact of sports participation on crime. Using the introduction of Title IX as a natural experiment, we find that exposure to a 10 percentage-point higher female sports participation rate while in high school reduced adult female arrests for Part I offenses by approximately 0.5 arrests per 1,000 population. This result is consistent with sports participation-induced gains in educational attainment and labor market outcomes and suggests important external benefits of the 1972 educational amendments to Title IX.
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