Analyzing the Impact of the World’s Largest Public Works Project on Crime

Satadru Das () and Naci Mocan

No 22499, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: India started the implementation of a rural public works program in 2006, covering all districts of the country within three years. The program quarantees 100 days of employment per year at minimum wage to each rural household on demand, with the goal of reducing joblessness and poverty. We exploit the design and implementation of this program to investigate its employment impact on various types of crimes, ranging from burglary to kidnapping to riots. We show that the program acts as an insurance scheme because an increase in rainfall, which is negatively correlated with agricultural production, lowers the demand for jobs under the program. Controlling for rainfall, we find that employment generated by the program has a negative impact on both property and violent crime. Although crime elasticities with respect to employment are small, this finding represents another dimension of the social benefit generated by the program.

JEL-codes: H0 I3 I38 J08 J43 K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lma and nep-ppm
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published as Satadru Das & Naci Mocan, 2020. "ANALYZING THE IMPACT OF THE WORLD'S LARGEST PUBLIC WORKS PROJECT ON CRIME," Economic Inquiry, vol 58(3), pages 1167-1182.

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