Table 1

Summary Statistics: Characteristics of Sample

AllRecidivate 1 YearRecidivate 3 Years
Male      0.882      0.903      0.905
White (not Hispanic)      0.427      0.415      0.402
Black (not Hispanic)      0.425      0.438      0.464
Hispanic      0.120      0.109      0.103
Less than HS degree      0.388      0.401      0.421
HS degree      0.315      0.325      0.312
College degree      0.007      0.005      0.005
Prior felony incarceration      0.290      0.334      0.330
Age at release    35.063    33.642    33.507
Time served (days)  655.543  485.335  540.696
Prior offense violent      0.216      0.192      0.189
Prior offense property      0.289      0.341      0.334
Prior offense drug      0.294      0.273      0.293
Min. wage      6.405      6.313      6.093
State EITC      0.357      0.393      0.374
State EITC percent      5.229      5.962      5.532
Observations5,786,062999,3211,645,055

  • Notes: “Recidivate 1 Year” indicates those released prisoners who returned to prison within one year of their release (analogous for “Recidivate 3 Year”). Violent, Property, Drug are indicators for the offense for which the offender initially went to prison. The final three rows represent the average value of those policy variables for the state and month in which the offender was released. State EITC is a dummy for whether the state had its own EITC in a given year; thus, that row represents a proportion. “State EITC percent” is the average percent of the federal EITC that the top-up represents.