RT Generic
T1 The impact of unilateral divorce on crime
A1 Cáceres-Delpiano, Julio
A1 Giolito, Eugenio P.
A2 Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Departamento de Economía, 
AB In this paper, we evaluate the impact of unilateral divorce on crime. First, using crime ratesfrom the FBI´s Uniform Crime Report program for the period 1965-1998 and differences in thetiming in the introduction of the reform, we find that unilateral divorce has a positive impact onviolent crime rates, with an 8% to 12% average increase for the period under consideration.Second, arrest data not only confirms the findings of a positive impact on violent crime but alsoshows that this impact is concentrated among those age groups (15 to 24) that are more likely toengage in these type of offenses. Specifically, for the age group 15-19, we observe an averageimpact over the period under analysis of 40% and 36% for murder and aggravated assault arrestrates, respectively. Disaggregating total arrest rates by race, we find that the effects are drivenby the Black sub-sample. Third, using the age at the time of the divorce law reform as a secondsource of variation to analyze age-specific arrest rates we confirm the positive impact on thedifferent types of violent crime as well as a positive impact for property crime rates, controllingfor all confounding factors that may operate at the state-year, state age or age-year level. Theresults for murder arrests and for homicide rates (Supplemental Homicide Report) for the 15-24age groups are robust with respect to specifications and specifically those that include year-stateand year-age dummies. The magnitude goes from 15% to 40% depending on the specificationand the age at the time of the reform.
SN 2340-5031
YR 2008
FD 2008-03
LK https://hdl.handle.net/10016/1877
UL https://hdl.handle.net/10016/1877
LA eng
LA eng
DS e-Archivo
RD 15 may. 2024