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Our guest is Becky Pettit, professor of sociology at the University of Washington. Her latest book is Invisible Men, Mass Incarceration and the Myth of Black Progress. The prison population in the United States has quintupled over the last 35 years. Over half of young inmates between about 20 and 35 have less than a high school diploma.

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.