From Inquest:
A long-standing question in public policy is to what extent income discourages illicit activity. To be sure, there is a strong negative correlation between income and crime — people with higher incomes are much less likely to be involved in the criminal justice system. But what is that correlation driven by? Indeed, it could be driven by numerous factors other than the income itself — for example, people with higher incomes generally have higher education levels and it could be that education is the true deterrent.
Because the correlation between income and crime could have multiple sources, a more useful policy question is: What is the causal effect of income on crime? How much does directly increasing people’s income — for example, through cash assistance programs — deter illicit behavior? Simple at first blush, this question is actually difficult to tackle because there are often countless other differences between groups of people with higher and lower incomes, so pinning down causation is not easy. Simply comparing recipients and non-recipients of a cash assistance program could very well lead to false conclusions about the effect of income on behavior.
In a new paper, we solve this research challenge using a policy change to the Supplemental Security Income program, commonly known as SSI, in 1996. The SSI program provides cash assistance and Medicaid to low-income children and adults with disabilities. The policy change, part of the 1996 welfare reform law and discussed in more detail below, resulted in one group of young people continuing to receive SSI benefits in adulthood while another, similar group of young people lost their SSI benefits once they became adults. We find that removing young adults’ SSI benefits increases their contact with the justice system, and especially over illicit activity intended to generate income. We estimate that removing a young adult from SSI increases the total number of criminal charges associated with income generation (theft, burglary, robbery, drug distribution, prostitution, and fraud) by 60% over the following two decades. This increase in court charges leads to a 60% increase in the likelihood of being incarcerated in a given year over the same time period. Continue reading >>>
|
|
|
|
