Striking at the Roots of Crime: The Impact of Welfare Spending on Crime during the Great Depression

Fishback, Price V.; Johnson, Ryan S.; Kantor, Shawn

doi:10.1086/655778

Cited by 62 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 50 publications

(26 reference statements)

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“…Fishback, Johnson and Kantor (2010), studying a panel of 83 cities between 1930 and 1940, found that New Deal relief decreased property crime during the Great Depression. Zhang (1997) examined states in 1987 and found a negative association between state AFDC generosity and property crime.…”

Section: Effects Of Welfare On Crimementioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of Welfare Reform on Women's Crime

Corman¹,

Dave²,

Reichman³

2013

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We investigate the effects of broad-based work incentives on female crime by exploiting the welfare reform legislation of the 1990s, which dramatically increased employment among women at risk for relying on cash assistance. We find that welfare reform decreased female property crime arrests by 4-5%, but did not affect other types of crimes. The effects appear to be stronger in states with lower welfare benefits and higher earnings disregards, and in states with larger caseload declines. The findings point to broad-based work incentives-and, by inference, employment-as a key determinant of female property crime. Although crime is predominantly a male activity and the propensity to engage in crime is much higher for males than for females with similar characteristics, females account for a nontrivial proportion of arrests in the U.S. In 2011, females accounted for over 37% of arrests for serious felony property crimes (burglary, larceny/theft, motor vehicle theft and arson) and almost one fifth of arrests for the violent crimes of murder, manslaughter, rape, and felonious assault In a recent comprehensive review, Bushway (2011) concluded that although there is a fair amount of evidence that crime is related to employment-related factors, the large-scale policy shift of welfare reform could potentially be leveraged to clarify the connections. Another advantage to exploiting the welfare reform legislation in this way-not discussed by Bushwayis that it would add to the almost non-existent literature on employment and crime among women.Very few population-based studies have specifically focused on determinants of female crime, with the most noteworthy analyses having been conducted over 25 years ago. Bartel (1979) examined female arrests using a cross-section of states in 1970. She found that deterrence variables were associated with arrest rates in the expected direction, and that marriage and labor force participation rates, particularly of single women, were positively associated with arrest rates for property crime. Phillips and Votey (1987) found that unemployment rates appeared to be important in explaining increases in arrest rates of women between 1952 and 1979. Although these studies were ground-breaking, labor force participation of women has increased, marriage has decreased, female headship has increased, and birth rates have decreased over the past half In this paper, we exploit welfare reform of the 1990s-a large-scale social experiment in the U.S. that dramatically increased employment among women at risk for relying on public cash assistance (i.e., generally, those with low human capital)-to investigate the effects of work incentives on female crime. Exploiting changes in the implementation of welfare reform across states and over time, we estimate the causal effects of the "work first" regime on adult women's arrests from 1992 to 2002, the period during which welfare reform unfolded. We consider several different types of crime and investigate the extent to which the effects are stronger in s...

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Section: Effects Of Welfare On Crimementioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of Welfare Reform on Women's Crime

Corman¹,

Dave²,

Reichman³

2013

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“… See, for example, Levitt (), Kessler and Levitt (), Di Tella and Schargrodsky (), Klick and Tabarrok (), Ayres and Levitt (), Freeman (), Grogger (), Machin and Meghir (), Fishback, Johnson, and Kantor (), Gould, Weinberg, and Mustard (), Shavell (), and Marvell and Moody (). …”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Squealer Dealers: The Market for Information in Federal Drug Trafficking Prosecutions

Nutting

2014

Economic Inquiry

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-Federal data on drug trafficking sentences are used to determine factors that affect market quantities of providing information against other defendants (i.e., defendant probabilities of receiving testimony-related sentence reductions) and market prices of information (i.e., the sizes of such sentence reductions). Women and better-educated defendants experience high demand (higher quantities and prices) for information. Blacks, Hispanics, and non-U.S. citizens experience low demand. Defendants expecting longer sentences have higher supply of information. Conditional on expected sentence, crack dealers, high-level dealers, and dealers with long criminal histories experience low demand, while low-level dealers experience high demand. Women of all races experience high demand for information.

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“…Foley examined the temporal patterns of crime in twelve American cities to show that "welfare beneficiaries consume welfare-related income quickly and then attempt to supplement it with criminal income" (2011, p. 97). Fishback et al (2010) found that, during the Great Depression, cities with higher levels of relief spending saw significantly lower levels of crime. There is also evidence that non-receipt of welfare 2 increases women's risk of offending (Monte andLewis 2011, Thompson andUggen 2013).…”

Section: The Political Economy Of Crimementioning

confidence: 99%

The political economy of crime: Did Universal Credit increase crime rates?

Tiratelli¹,

Bradford²,

Yesberg³

2020

Preprint

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Interest in the political economy of crime goes back to sociology’s founding fathers, but the nature of the relationship between restrictive social security systems and crime rates remains contested. This paper exploits exogenous variation in the introduction of Universal Credit to local areas across England and Wales to address this question. We first use fixed effects models, with a range of controls, to show that as Universal Credit enrolments increase in a given area, so does the crime rate. We then use interrupted time series analysis to show that, despite Universal Credit being rolled out at different times in different places, its introduction in each local area coincides with a positive shift in the trend in crime. Borrowing from Strain Theory and Routine Activities Theory, we suggest that changes to the pool of motivated offenders may help to explain these correlations.

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Striking at the Roots of Crime: The Impact of Welfare Spending on Crime during the Great Depression

Cited by 62 publications

References 50 publications

Effects of Welfare Reform on Women's Crime

Effects of Welfare Reform on Women's Crime

Squealer Dealers: The Market for Information in Federal Drug Trafficking Prosecutions

The political economy of crime: Did Universal Credit increase crime rates?

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