SNAP Benefits and Crime: Evidence from Changing Disbursement Schedules

Carr, Jillian B.; Packham, Analisa

doi:10.1162/rest_a_00757

Cited by 74 publications

(53 citation statements)

References 19 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…In theory, gaining insurance reduces expected medical expenditures and increases disposable income for the newly insured. Intuition and empirical evidence suggest positive income shocks align with a reduction in financially motivated crimes (Carr & Packham, 2019a). However, income shocks can also affect violent crimes through changes in financially‐related stress.…”

Section: Background and Conceptual Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Access to Healthcare and Criminal Behavior: Evidence from the ACA Medicaid Expansions

Vogler¹

2020

J Policy Anal Manage

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

I investigate the causal relationship between access to healthcare and crime following state decisions to expand Medicaid coverage after the Affordable Care Act. I combine state-level crime data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation Uniform Crime Reports for the years 2009 through 2018 with variation in insurance eligibility generated by the Medicaid expansion. Using a difference-indifferences design, my findings indicate that states that expanded Medicaid have experienced a 5.3 percent reduction in annual reported violent crime rates relative to nonexpansion states. This effect is explained by decreases in aggravated assaults and corresponds to 17 fewer incidents per 100,000 people. The estimated decrease in reported crime amounts to an annual cost savings of approximately $4 billion.

show abstract

Section: Background and Conceptual Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Access to Healthcare and Criminal Behavior: Evidence from the ACA Medicaid Expansions

Vogler¹

2020

J Policy Anal Manage

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…7 To facilitate the transition to the new welfare system, the initial eligibility criteria for claiming UC benefits focused on the simplest cases: New claimants, single, unemployed, non-home-owning and without children. 8 (Kennedy and Keen, 2018). This has led to a large increase in the number of UC recipients in each constituency.…”

Section: Institutional Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This hypothesis is further supported by estimates that are robust to the inclusion of constituency-specific linear and quadratic trends, and by the event study analysis showing that the increase in burglaries is emerging 'on impact' and it is not inflated by upward crime trajectories prior to the program implementation. 8 New claimants are defined as claimants who were not enrolled in the Legacy system when UC was operating in a constituency. It is possible these claimants were receiving benefits before the introduction of Universal Credit but that-for any reason-left the welfare system some time prior its start.…”

Section: Institutional Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

Universal Credit and Crime

D'Este

Harvey²

2020

SSRN Journal

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Any opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author(s) and not those of IZA. Research published in this series may include views on policy, but IZA takes no institutional policy positions. The IZA research network is committed to the IZA Guiding Principles of Research Integrity. The IZA Institute of Labor Economics is an independent economic research institute that conducts research in labor economics and offers evidence-based policy advice on labor market issues. Supported by the Deutsche Post Foundation, IZA runs the world's largest network of economists, whose research aims to provide answers to the global labor market challenges of our time. Our key objective is to build bridges between academic research, policymakers and society. IZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author.

show abstract

“…In some cases, government programs have also been found unable to decrease crime, or, less often, to increase it(Jacob et al, 2015;Carr and Koppa, 2017;Costopoulos et al, 2017;Luallen et al, 2018).2 Vogler's work and ours were performed independently and concurrently. His draft was first publicly posted on SSRN when the first draft of this paper was being finalized.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The effect of health insurance on crime: Evidence from the Affordable Care Act Medicaid expansion

Barkowski

2020

Health Economics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Little evidence exists on the effect of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) on criminal behavior, a gap in the literature that this paper seeks to address. Using a simple model, we argue we should anticipate a decrease in time devoted to criminal activities in response to the expansion, because the availability of the ACA Medicaid coverage raises the opportunity cost of crime. This prediction is particularly relevant for the ACA expansion because it primarily affects childless adults, a population likely to contain individuals who engage in criminal behavior. We validate this forecast empirically using a difference-in-differences framework, estimating the expansion's effects on panel datasets of state-and county-level crime rates. Our estimates suggest that the ACA Medicaid expansion was negatively associated with burglary, vehicle theft, homicide, robbery, and assault.These crime-reduction spillover effects represent an important offset to the government's cost burden for the ACA Medicaid expansion.

show abstract

SNAP Benefits and Crime: Evidence from Changing Disbursement Schedules

Cited by 74 publications

References 19 publications

Access to Healthcare and Criminal Behavior: Evidence from the ACA Medicaid Expansions

Access to Healthcare and Criminal Behavior: Evidence from the ACA Medicaid Expansions

Universal Credit and Crime

The effect of health insurance on crime: Evidence from the Affordable Care Act Medicaid expansion

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About