Pettit on the Prison Population, Survey Data and African-American Progress

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.

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Pettit on the Prison Population, Survey Data and African-American Progress is an episode from EconTalk Archives, 2012 by Library of Economics and Liberty.

This episode is 1:02:51 long.

This episode was published on Dec 31, 2012.

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