CESR Events

Tuesday, June 29
12pm – 1pm PT
VPD 203 and Zoom

Abstract: Permanent supportive housing (PSH), which combines subsidized affordable housing with case management and social services, represents an increasingly popular approach to responding to chronic homelessness. However, attempts to develop new PSH facilities often encounter local resistance based on concerns that such facilities threaten public safety to nearby residents. This preregistered study provides new evidence on whether PSH facilities causally affect crime in proximate areas, using the rapid expansion of PSH facilities in Los Angeles County as a natural experiment. Combining administrative crime data from 2010 to 2023 with housing data from state and local government sources, we employ a staggered difference-in-differences design to compare crime changes in the area surrounding newly opened PSH facilities to contemporaneous changes in areas where PSH facilities will open in the future. Results show precise null effects of PSH openings on total crime, violence, and property crime, in general ruling out crime increases over 6 percent. While we can conclude that opening supportive housing facilities does not lead to a measurable local increase in property or violent crime, we cannot rule out effects of PSH openings on local disorder, an important driver of perceptions of safety.

Bio: Rosanna Smart is a senior economist at RAND, codirector of the RAND Drug Policy Research Center, codirector of the RAND Gun Policy in America initiative, and professor of policy analysis at the RAND School of Public Policy. Her research focuses on risky behaviors, illegal markets, drug policy, and the determinants of gun violence. Within her drug policy research, she currently leads projects evaluating the implications of evolving cannabis market dynamics, assessing the consequences of supply shocks to psychiatric medications, and assessing the effects of drug paraphernalia decriminalization on crime and criminal justice outcomes. Her other strand of research focuses on informing effective gun policy in the United States, evaluating the differential effects of gun policy across different populations and communities and identifying interventions and policies that can reduce gun violence. Her research has been published in outlets such as the New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of Health Economics, Journal of Quantitative Criminology, American Journal of Public Health, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Monday, July 13
12pm – 1pm PT
VPD 203 and Zoom

Abstract: The establishment of the UK National Health Service (NHS) in July 1948 was one of the most consequential health policy interventions of the twentieth century, providing universal and free access to medical care and substantially expanding maternal and infant health services. In this paper, we estimate the causal effect of the NHS introduction on early-life mortality and we test whether survival is selective. We adopt a regression discontinuity design under local randomization, comparing individuals born just before and just after July 1948. Leveraging newly digitized weekly death records, we document a significant decline in stillbirths and infant mortality following the introduction of the NHS, the latter driven primarily by reductions in deaths from congenital conditions and diarrhea. We then use polygenic indexes (PGIs), fixed at conception, to track changes in population composition, showing that cohorts born at or after the NHS introduction exhibit higher PGIs associated with contextually-adverse traits (e.g., depression, COPD, and preterm birth) and lower PGIs associated with contextually-valued traits (e.g., educational attainment, self-rated health, and pregnancy length), with effect sizes as large as 7.5\% of a standard deviation. These results based on the UK Biobank data are robust to family-based designs and replicate in the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing and the UK Household Longitudinal Study. Effects are strongest in socioeconomically disadvantaged areas and among males. This novel evidence on the existence and magnitude of selective survival highlights how large-scale public policies can leave a persistent imprint on population composition and generate long-term survival biases.

Monday, July 20
12pm – 1pm PT
VPD 203 and Zoom

Monday, July 27
12pm – 1pm PT
VPD 203 and Zoom

Thursday, September 3
9am – 10am Pacific Time
Zoom (See email for Zoom link)