Abstract
Past literature has shown that 1970 amendments to the clean air act (CAA) led to significant reduction in air pollution early 1970s, and that it had positive infant health consequences for the cohorts treated by CAA. Because effects of in-utero and early childhood conditions are persistent, and the health effects can remain latent for years, CAA may impact the future adult outcomes. In this paper, I investigate the impact of the CAA on the future crime. In a difference-in-differences framework, I find that the cohorts that were born in the year of the CAA’s first implementation commit fewer crimes 15–24 years later. The magnitude of this impact is about 6%. Property crimes rather than violent crimes are impacted. I also estimate that CAA reduced the ambient air pollution by 17%. These reduced form estimates suggest that a 1% reduction in air pollution reduces future crime rate by 0.35%.
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02 October 2022
A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10640-022-00737-3
Notes
Becker (1968) was the first paper to compare the potential benefits with cost of committing crime. Several past papers also show a positive impact of unemployment rate on crime (Altindag 2012; Nordin and Almen 2017), and a negative relationship between earnings and crime (Witt et al. 1998; Mocan and Unel 2011).
US experienced one of the greatest declines in crime rate in early 1990s. Many papers in the past have studied about the factors that could explain this sudden fall in the crime rate in early 1990s. the main factors that seem to explain this reduction in crime are increase in forces (police), increased imprisonment, the descent of crack, racial profiling, concealed weapons law, and legalized abortion (Donahue and Levitt 2001; Levitt 2004; Levitt and Miles 2006).
The effect of early childhood exposure to air pollution on crime has not been extensively studied so far. Few papers argue that exposure to lead has a contemporaneous impact on the violent crime because of the aggressive and violent behavior lead induces (Needleman et al. 1996; Stretesky and Lynch 2004).
States had to pay a penalty to the Federal government if they did not comply with the standards set by the act.
See Appendix Table 14 for the 1970 CAAA timeline.
See Appendix Fig. 6 that shows the pollution levels of nonattainment counties vs. attainment counties from 1965 to 1989.
Precisely, the yearly TSPs concentration I used is the weighted average of the annual arithmetic means of the TSP concentration measured at each monitor site in the county, the number of observations at each monitor per year being used as the weights.
These criteria pollutants include particulate matter (TSP until 1986, PM10 and PM2.5 after that), sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, ozone, and lead.
It is not clear from EPA as to whether these minimum requirements were set at the county level or at a more aggregate level of region. Following Greenstone (2003b) I assume it to be at the county level.
Though the amendments were not implemented until the beginning of the year 1972, the counties are classified into the nonattainment status based on their 1970 TSP level because when the states were preparing their State Implementation Plans (SIPs) in 1971 for the submission to the federal government, they would have assigned the nonattainment status to their counties based on the latest available TSP level, which was for year 1970.
Serious offenses include Murder, Rape, Robbery and, Assault under Violent Crimes and Burglary, Larceny and, Motor Vehicle Theft under Property Crimes.
Non-serious offenses include Forgery, Fraud, Embezzlement, Vandalism, Prostitution, drug Abuse, and Gambling.
A detailed description on the data sources of the control variables is provided in the data appendix.
This form of the regression equation could cause the problem of multiple hypothesis testing. To correct for that, I used Romano and Wolf’s rwolf program to calculate the stepdown adjusted p-values.
Direct costs include property losses, productivity losses, and medical bills. Indirect costs is in terms of pain, and emotional trauma.
I also did a same event study analysis for different groups of ages and got similar results.
I do a similar estimation for the violent crime rates and see insignificant impact for the cohorts before as well as after the implementation of act, which is consistent with the earlier results.
To divide the states in these two categories, I took the median share of the states and then, did the lower half and upper half to get the states with lower share of migration and higher share of migration, respectively.
Though the nonattainment status was assigned based on two thresholds, the second threshold of second-highest daily reading of the year was not binding. Also, there were very few counties out of a total of 297 who satisfied second condition and not the first one. Therefore, following Isen et al. (2017), I use only the first condition to determine the cut-off point for the RDD model.
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Appendix
Appendix
1.1 Data Appendix
1.1.1 Prisoners
Data on prisoners per capita is at the state level obtained from the “National Prisoner Statistics” published by the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
1.1.2 Police
Police per capita is also at the state level, calculated using the “Police Employee (LEOKA) Data” provided by UCR program published by the FBI annually.
1.1.3 Poverty
Poverty rate data at the state level each year is taken from the Bureau of the Census “United States Statistical Abstract”.
1.1.4 Employment and Unemployment
Unemployment rate at the county level is provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And, employment levels at the county level by industries is taken by the Bureau of Economic Analysis to calculate the manufacturing employment ratio (the proxy for 1st instrument).
1.1.5 Income
Income per capita used is at the county level, which is from the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
1.1.6 Population
To calculate the crime rates, I have taken the population estimates for the United States at the county level by age and sex from the U.S. Census Bureau.
1.1.7 Precipitation and Temperature
The average annual precipitation and temperature at the county level is obtained from the “Climate Division” of the National Centers for Environmental Information.
See Fig. 6.
National Trends in TSP Air Pollution in Nonattainment vs. Attainment Counties. The annual national trends in average total suspended particulates (TSPs), a measure of air pollution from 1967 to 1975 in the US, for nonattainment and attainment counties separately. It shows a significant drop in the TSP level of the attainment counties after the implementation of 1970 CAAA in the attainment counties as compared to the TSP level of attainment counties, which is fairly constant over the period
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Sadana, D. Effects of Early Childhood Exposure to Pollution on Crime: Evidence from 1970 Clean Air Act. Environ Resource Econ 84, 279–312 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10640-022-00724-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10640-022-00724-8