Choice or Constraint? Mass Incarceration and Fertility Outcomes Among American Men

The rapid growth of the prison system over the last three decades represents a critical institutional intervention in the lives of American families, which may have far-reaching and unintended consequences for demographic processes. In this paper, we investigate how exposure to the criminal justice system affects the fertility of men. Using propensity score matching methods and data from multiple sources, we show that incarceration constrains the ferility of men and that these reductions would not have been due to individual choice in the absence of incarceration. Although incapacitation lowers the parity of men while incarcerated, we find that these parity reductions are offset by catch-up fertility when released. Spending time in prison significantly lowers the parity of male inmates by as much as one birth. Our findings are robust to different model specifications and data sources.