Analysis on the Influence of Educational Attainment on Criminal Behavior

It is believed that there is a positive relationship between education and crime. Therefore, the author intends to analyze the influence of educational attainment on criminal behavior to support this hypothesis. In this paper, the effect of educational attainment on criminal behavior is discussed in detail. The government expenditure on higher education per person is equipped as the instrumental variable to avoid the simultaneous effect between education and crime. Based on the data from Statistics Canada, it is found that there is a significantly negative relation between educational attainment and the probability to practice crime through OLS and TSLS estimation. Evidence from both the violent crime severity index and the non-violent crime severity index suggests that the effect of education on crime is strong and significant.