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Health and Crime

Paper Session

Sunday, Jan. 7, 2018 8:00 AM - 10:00 AM

Marriott Philadelphia Downtown, Meeting Room 308
Hosted By: American Economic Association
  • Chair: Trevon Logan, Ohio State University

The Effects of a Criminal Record on Employment, Welfare Participation, and Health: A Model of Long-run Behaviors and Outcomes When Lagged Variables Are Missing Non-randomly

Ning Fu
,
University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
Donna B. Gilleskie
,
University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
Shawn Kneipp
,
University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
Todd Schwartz
,
University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
Amanda Sheely
,
London School of Economics

Abstract

We study the collateral consequences of women's criminal records on their future employment opportunity, welfare participation, and health outcomes. We explicitly model the dynamic process of women's life-cycle behaviors of employment, school enrollment, welfare receipt, criminal offenses, and physical and mental health outcomes using a longitudinal survey data set. Because some survey questions about behaviors are dependent on responses to previous questions, we address the endogeneity of missing lagged variables by modeling the missingness as functions of women's endogenous histories of behaviors and outcomes, exogenous characteristics, as well as permanent and time-varying unobserved heterogeneity and random shocks. The econometric approach allows us to uncover direct causal impacts of criminal record on health, as well as the indirect effects on health through employment, education, and welfare receipt. We use the estimated dynamic model to simulate employment, welfare, and health trajectories based on different criminal record histories and policy scenarios.

The Financial Instability Cost of Shrinking Public Health Insurance

Laura M. Argys
,
University of Colorado-Denver
Andrew Friedson
,
University of Colorado-Denver
M. Melinda Pitts
,
Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta
D. Sebastian Tello-Trillo
,
University of Virginia

Abstract

The main goal of health insurance is to smooth out the financial risk that comes with health shocks and health care. Nevertheless, there has been relatively sparse evidence on how health insurance affects financial outcomes. Current studies focus on how gaining health insurance affects financial outcomes. In this paper, we contribute to this literature by exploring the effects of losing public health insurance on financial risk outcomes. We use the 2005 TennCare disenrollment - which dropped about 170,000 individuals from Medicaid - as the plausibly exogenous shock to health insurance status. We use across and within-county variation in the size of the disenrollment, linked with individual level credit score and debt data to identify the effects. We find that the disenrollment lead to a reduction in 1.57 points in credit risk scores for the average resident in a county with the median TennCare enrollment. We also have suggestive evidence of increases in amount and share of debt that is delinquent (90 days past its due date). These findings have potentially important implications for recent state public health insurance expansions that are part of federal health care reform.

The Impact of Federal Law Enforcement Grants on Drug Arrests: Evidence From the Edward Byrne Program

Robynn Cox
,
University of Southern California
Jamein P. Cunningham
,
University of Memphis

Abstract

We estimate the effectiveness of the Edward Byrne Memorial State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance Program, a grant program authorized under the 1986 and 1988 Anti-Drug Abuse Act to combat illicit drug abuse and to improve the criminal justice system, on racial bias in policing. Funds for the Byrne Grant program were available for a variety of purposes to combat drug crimes, as well as violent and other drug related crimes. Event-study analysis suggests that implementation of this grant program resulted in an increase in police hiring and an increase in arrests for drug trafficking. Post-treatment effect implies a 107 percent increase in white arrests for drug sales compared to a 44 percent increase for blacks, 6 years after the first grant is received. However due to historical racial differences in drug arrest rates, the substantial increase in white drug arrests still results in large racial disparities in drug arrests. This is supported by weighted least squares regression estimates that show, for every $100 increase in Byrne Grant funding, arrests for drug trafficking increased by roughly 22 per 100,000 white residents and by 101 arrest per 100,000 black residents. The results provide strong evidence that federal involvement into narcotic control and trafficking led to an increase in apprehension of drug offenders; disproportionally affecting blacks.
Discussant(s)
Juan Pantano
,
University of Chicago
Rodney Andrews
,
University of Texas-Dallas
Anne Morrison Piehl
,
Rutgers University
Vicki Bogan
,
Cornell University
JEL Classifications
  • I1 - Health
  • K4 - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior