The Rise of Educational Inequality in the United States

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Proul: The U.S. incarcerates a higher fraction of its population than any other advanced industrialized country. Men are much more likely to be in prison or jail than are whites or Hispanics or any other racial group, he says. Proul: People with low levels of education have historically been overrepresented in the criminal justice system. He says educational inequality has become so dramatic that among young black men who have dropped at a high school, two thirds can expect to spend at least a year in prison.

Becky Pettit of the University of Washington and author of Invisible Men talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the growth of the prison population in the United States in recent decades. Pettit describes the magnitude of the increase particularly among demographic groups. She then discusses the implications of this increase for interpreting social statistics. Because the prison population isn't included in the main government surveys used by social scientists, data drawn from those surveys can be misleading as to what is actually happening among demographic groups, particularly the African-American population.