Universal Cash and Crime

Watson, Brett; Guettabi, Mouhcine; Reimer, Matthew N.

doi:10.1162/rest_a_00834

Cited by 50 publications

(46 citation statements)

References 50 publications

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“…This may appear to contrast with Watson et al. (2019) who find the (negative) marginal effect on property crime of an increase in the Dividend to be non‐significant. However, as noted already, their analysis addresses a different question—the effect of Dividend receipt rather than the Dividend per se —and sensitivity to the size of the Dividend is considered only in the week of receipt, rather than over a longer period.…”

Section: Resultscontrasting

confidence: 75%

A Bayesian Structural Time Series Analysis of the Effect of Basic Income on Crime: Evidence From the Alaska Permanent Fund

Dorsett

2020

Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A: Statistics in Society

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This paper examines the impact of Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend on crime. The Dividend has been payable annually to state residents since 1982 and is the world’s longest‐running example of a basic income. Initially universal, from 1989 onwards eligibility was withdrawn from an increasing proportion of those in prison. A Bayesian structural time series estimator is used to simulate Alaskan crime rates in the counterfactual no‐Dividend case. A comparison with actual rates provides an estimate of the Dividend’s impact. This does not provide strong evidence of an effect. However, incorporating information on Dividend amounts suggests the size of payments is important, with larger amounts reducing crime. There is no evidence that this effect is reinforced by the 1989 change to eligibility. The results demonstrate the potential for a basic income to encourage positive outcomes and lend support to payment being universal rather than conditional.

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Section: Resultscontrasting

confidence: 75%

A Bayesian Structural Time Series Analysis of the Effect of Basic Income on Crime: Evidence From the Alaska Permanent Fund

Dorsett

2020

Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A: Statistics in Society

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“…We classify products as SNAP-eligible or SNAP-ineligible based on the retailer's taxonomy and the guidelines for eligibility published on the USDA website. 25 Among all nonfuel purchases in our data, 71 percent of spending goes to SNAPeligible products, 25 percent goes to SNAP-ineligible products, and the remainder goes to products that we cannot classify. 26 We use our detailed payment data for purchases made in SNAP months in March 2009 or later to validate our product eligibility classification.…”

Section: B Product Characteristicsmentioning

confidence: 79%

“…Calculations in the online Appendix show that in the 2008 Survey of Income and Program Participation(Roth 2008), households are on SNAP in 9.0 to 11.9 percent of survey months, and 17.2 to 21.7 percent of households are on SNAP at some point during the panel 25. Grocery and prepared food items intended for home consumption are generally SNAP-eligible (FNS 2017a).…”

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confidence: 99%

How Are SNAP Benefits Spent? Evidence from a Retail Panel

Hastings

Shapiro

2018

American Economic Review

157

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We use a novel retail panel with detailed transaction records to study the effect of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) on household spending. We use administrative data to motivate three approaches to causal inference. The marginal propensity to consume SNAP-eligible food (MPCF) out of SNAP benefits is 0.5 to 0.6. The MPCF out of cash is much smaller. These patterns obtain even for households for whom SNAP benefits are economically equivalent to cash because their benefits are below their food spending. Using a semiparametric framework, we reject the hypothesis that households respect the fungibility of money. A model with mental accounting can match the facts. (JEL D12, H75, I12, I18, I38)

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“…Although they were published too recently to be included, new studies have used the Alaska Permanent Dividend Fund-which annually distributes a small but universal basic income of one to two thousand dollars to (almost) every citizen-to study the impact on crime. See Watson, Guettabi, and Reimer (2019) and Dorsett (2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Impact of an Experimental Guaranteed Income on Crime and Violence

Calnitsky

Goñalons-Pons

2020

Social Problems

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Would unconditional cash payments reduce crime and violence? This paper examines data on crime and violence in the context of an understudied social experiment from the late 1970s called the Manitoba Basic Annual Income Experiment, or Mincome. We combine town-level crime statistics for all medium-sized Canadian Prairie towns with town-level socio-demographic data from the census to study how an experimental guaranteed income affected both violent crime and total crime. We find a significant negative relationship between Mincome and both outcomes. We also decompose total crime and analyze its main components, property crime and “other” crime, and find a significant negative relationship between Mincome and property crime. While the impact on property crime is theoretically straightforward, we close by speculating on the mechanisms that might link the availability of guaranteed annual income payments to a decline in violence, focusing on the mechanisms that shape patterns of inter-partner violence.

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Universal Cash and Crime

Cited by 50 publications

References 50 publications

A Bayesian Structural Time Series Analysis of the Effect of Basic Income on Crime: Evidence From the Alaska Permanent Fund

A Bayesian Structural Time Series Analysis of the Effect of Basic Income on Crime: Evidence From the Alaska Permanent Fund

How Are SNAP Benefits Spent? Evidence from a Retail Panel

The Impact of an Experimental Guaranteed Income on Crime and Violence

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