EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Welfare Programs and Crime Spillovers

David Jinkins, Elira Kuka and Claudio Labanca

No 33926, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Research on the social safety net examines its effects on recipients and their families. We show that these effects extend beyond recipients’ families. Using a regression discontinuity design and administrative data, we study a Danish policy that cut welfare benefits for refugees, increasing crime among affected individuals. Linking refugees to neighbors, we find increased crime among non-Danish neighbors, with spillovers persisting even after direct effects stabilize. Accounting for these spillovers raises the marginal value of public funds by 20%. We explore several mechanisms and find evidence consistent with peer effects among young individuals from the same country of origin.

JEL-codes: I38 K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mig
Note: LE LS PE
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w33926.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:33926

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w33926
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().

 
Page updated 2025-07-01
Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:33926