Incarceration and the Risks of Poverty in Old Age: Examining the Significance of Gender

Background and Purpose: The explosion of “mass incarceration” in the United States since the 1980s is well documented. Dramatic shifts in federal and state policies that have redirected resources away from poverty reduction initiatives toward massive carceral expansion, driven by disproportionate targeting of low-income communities of color with harsh penalties for non-violent crimes, have left a lasting toll whose effects are just beginning to be measured. Longitudinal research, for example, has highlighted that the chances of falling into poverty over the life course may be episodic and difficult to predict, but that older adults, particularly older women, are at increased risk for poverty in the transition from work to retirement. Research on the feminization of poverty helps explain why older women may face poverty at greater rates after retirement. However, less is known about the risk factors of poverty for older men, and even less has been written about the connection between incarceration and poverty for either group. Additionally, extant studies examining the link between incarceration and economic well-being throughout the life course generally stop short of assessing economic status through the transition to retirement and old age. Thus, this study extends prior work by examining the risk factors associated with falling into poverty across time, and specifically, the changing patterns of risk among older men and women by age of first incarceration.

Methods: This research aggregates the graduate and sibling samples from the 1993, 2003, and 2011 Waves of the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS) to first estimate life tables that describe the risk of falling into poverty among men and women at different ages of first incarceration. The study then estimates discrete-time hazard models to investigate whether the risk of falling into poverty varies for men and women at different ages of first incarceration.

Results: Life table analysis revealed a cumulative poverty rate of 24.6% among men with no incarceration history, but men who were 25 and older at first incarceration were at higher risk (30.9%) while men who were younger than 25 at first incarceration were at lower risk (21.4%). However, women with or without incarceration history were still at greater cumulative risk as 59.6% fell into poverty during the observation period. In the final discrete-time hazard model, it was revealed that women who were younger than 25 at first incarceration were 3.67 times more likely relative to women with no incarceration history to fall into poverty. Meanwhile, men with or without incarceration history were still significantly less likely relative to women with no incarceration history to fall into poverty during the observation period.

Conclusions and Implications: While older men with histories of incarceration may be at risk of poverty, older women who were incarcerated at younger ages are particularly susceptible. Thus, policy makers should redirect resources away from carceral expansion toward poverty reduction initiatives, especially those targeting women younger than 25 in addition to racial and ethnic minorities who are disproportionately impacted by mass incarceration.