Welfare Activation and Youth Crime
研究了一项收紧社会救助激活要求的福利改革对青少年犯罪的影响，发现改革减少了经济困难家庭中十几岁男孩的犯罪，机制包括限制活动和人力资本积累。
Abstract We evaluate the impact on youth crime of a welfare reform that tightened activation requirements for social assistance clients. The evaluation strategy exploits administrative individual data in combination with geographically differentiated implementation of the reform. We find that the reform reduced crime among teenage boys from economically disadvantaged families. Stronger reform effects on weekday versus weekend crime, reduced school dropout, and favorable long-run outcomes in terms of crime and educational attainment point to both incapacitation and human capital accumulation as key mechanisms. Despite lowered social assistance take-up, we uncover no indication that loss of income support pushed youth into crime.