Losing Medicaid and Crime

Monica Deza, Thanh Lu, Johanna Maclean and Alberto Ortega

No 32227, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We study the impact of losing health insurance on crime by leveraging one of the most substantial Medicaid disenrollments in U.S. history, which occurred in Tennessee in 2005 and led to 170,000 adults unexpectedly losing coverage. Using police agency-level data and a difference-in-differences approach, we find that this mass insurance loss reduced Medicaid enrollment and increased total crime rates with particularly strong effects for non-violent crime. An analysis of mechanisms suggests that the disenrollment had aggregate effects that extended beyond insurance losses. In particular, we show that the policy shock lead to changes in economic stability, healthcare access and health outcomes, and government spending, all of which could have contributed to the increase in crime we document.

JEL-codes: I1 I12 I13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea, nep-law and nep-ure
Note: EH
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