Erid Pérez
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Erid Pérez
@eridperez.bsky.social
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Reposted by Erid Pérez
scottsantens.com
In 1996, SSI was reformed so that those turning 18 had to reapply. A study of the results of that change revealed that the loss of that income led to a 60% INCREASE in the annual likelihood of incarceration of those who lost it, negating the savings of less SSI spending.

www.nber.org/papers/w29800
We estimate the effect of losing Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits at age 18 on criminal justice and employment outcomes over the next two decades. To estimate this effect, we use a regression discontinuity design in the likelihood of being reviewed for SSI eligibility at age 18 created by the 1996 welfare reform law. We evaluate this natural experiment with Social Security Administration data linked to records from the Criminal Justice Administrative Records System. We find that SSI removal increases the number of criminal charges by a statistically significant 20% over the next two decades. The increase in charges is concentrated in offenses for which income generation is a primary motivation (60% increase), especially theft, burglary, fraud/forgery, and prostitution. The effect of SSI removal on criminal justice involvement persists more than two decades later, even as the effect of removal on contemporaneous SSI receipt diminishes. In response to SSI removal, youth are twice as likely to be charged with an illicit income-generating offense than they are to maintain steady employment at $15,000/year in the labor market. As a result of these charges, the annual likelihood of incarceration increases by a statistically significant 60% in the two decades following SSI removal. The costs to taxpayers of enforcement and incarceration from SSI removal are so high that they nearly eliminate the savings to taxpayers from reduced SSI benefits.
December 14, 2024 at 3:05 PM
Reposted by Erid Pérez
scottsantens.com
A 2021 study looked at the impacts on crime that a guaranteed basic income had in Dauphin's pilot when the town ended poverty for four years. Turns out overall crime went down 15% and violent crime went down 37%, mostly in the form of less domestic violence.

scholar.google.com/scholar_look...
The Impact of an Experimental Guaranteed Income on Crime and Violence David Calnitsky1 and Pilar Gonalons-Pons2 1 University of Western Ontario, 2 University of Pennsylvania ABSTRACT 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 com- bine 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 in- come 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 rela- tionship between Mincome and property crime. While the impact on property crime is the- oretically 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.
December 14, 2024 at 3:15 PM