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作者

Monica Deza;Johanna Catherine Maclean;Keisha Solomon

来源

来源 JOURNAL OF URBAN ECONOMICS,Vol.129,P.

语言

英文

关键字

Mental health;Crime;Healthcare;Spillovers;Workforce;I10;I18;J20

作者单位

Department of Economics, Hunter College, 695 Park Avenue, HW 1541, New York NY, USA;Department of Economics, Temple University, & NBER & IZA, 1301 Cecil B. Moore Avenue, Ritter Annex 869, Philadelphia PA, USA;Department of Health Policy & Management, Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, 624 North Broadway, Room 306, Baltimore, MD 21205, USA;Department of Economics, Hunter College, 695 Park Avenue, HW 1541, New York NY, USA;Department of Economics, Temple University, & NBER & IZA, 1301 Cecil B. Moore Avenue, Ritter Annex 869, Philadelphia PA, USA;Department of Health Policy & Management, Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, 624 North Broadway, Room 306, Baltimore, MD 21205, USA

摘要

We estimate the effect of local access to office-based mental healthcare on crime. We leverage variation in the number of mental healthcare offices within a county over the period 1999 to 2014 in a two-way fixed-effects model. We find that increases in the number of mental healthcare offices reduce crime. In particular, ten additional offices in a county reduces crime by 1.6 crimes per 10,000 residents, or 0.4% relative to the sample mean. Adjusting crimes based on their social costs implies larger effect sizes: ten additional offices reduces crime costs per capita by 2.2%. These findings suggest an unintended benefit from expanding the office-based mental healthcare workforce: reductions in crime.