Gang membership is believed to impede success in the legitimate economic market while simultaneously supporting success in the illegal market. We extend the study of the economic effects of gang membership by using a within‐ and between‐individual analytic design, decomposing gang membership into multiple statuses (i.e., entering a gang, continuously in a gang, leaving a gang, and inactive gang membership), examining legal and illegal earnings simultaneously, and accounting for factors endogenous to gang membership that may contribute to economic achievement. By using panel data from 1,213 individuals who participated in the Pathways to Desistance Study to conduct a multilevel path analysis, we find that active gang membership status is unrelated to legal earnings. Alternatively, entering a gang is associated with increased illegal earnings, attributable to changes in delinquent peers and drug use, whereas leaving a gang has a direct relationship with decreased illegal earnings. Our results indicate that the positive economic effect of gang membership (i.e., illegal earnings and total earnings) is short‐lived and that, on balance, the sum of the gang membership experience does not “pay” in terms of overall earnings.

中文翻译：

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帮派会员付费吗？通过成年后的非法和合法收入*

帮派成员被认为会阻碍合法经济市场的成功，同时又支持非法市场的成功。我们使用内部和个体之间的分析设计，将帮派成员分解为多种状态（例如，进入帮派，连续进入帮派，离开帮派和不活跃帮派成员），扩展了帮派成员的经济影响研究。 ，同时检查合法和非法收入，并说明帮派成员身份可能导致经济成就的内在因素。通过使用参加“通往疾病之路”研究的1,213位个体的面板数据进行多层次路径分析，我们发现活跃的帮派成员身份与合法收入无关。另外，进入帮派会增加非法收入，归因于同龄犯罪和毒品使用的变化，而离开黑帮与非法收入减少有直接关系。我们的结果表明，团伙成员的正向经济效应（即非法收入和总收入）是短暂的，总的说来，团伙成员经历的总和并不能“支付”总收入。