In 1980 among that same age group of young black men it was about five percent. If we go to 2008 it's 11.4 percent for young African-Americans and 1.8 percent for young whites. "It's nine times eight times eight sevenSeven times higher roughly," he says.
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.