EXAMPLE PAGE - SCHOOL BROCHURE - DEMOCRACY - Flipbook - Page 53
LIFE WILL BE BETTER
WHEN WE REDUCE CRIME
THROUGH A SIMPLE CALENDAR HACK
JENNIFER FREEMAN,
associate professor
of toxicology, studies health risks associated
with exposure to environmental contaminants, especially in drinking water. Her work
is helping pinpoint dangerous contaminants
to keep us from being exposed to them.
CORDELIA RUNNING,
assistant professor
of nutrition science, runs the SPIT lab
that researches how sensation, secretions
and psychology influence the taste, texture, and smell of food. Her work could
help us find ways to make healthy food
irresistibly delicious.
Call it a threadbare joke or a painful
truth, but plenty of us find ourselves with
too much month at the end of our money.
That fact is particularly salient for those
who receive modest incomes through cash
and in-kind government transfers such as
Supplemental Security Income (SSI) or the
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
That first-of-the-month timing for the
distribution of some transfers can lead to
surprising real-world problems. For example, grocery store thefts spike dramatically
when people run out of benefits and food
resources. (Among economists, it’s known
informally as a “calorie crunch.”)
New research by assistant professor of
economics Jillian Carr suggests a surprisingly simple technique that could minimize the issue: staggering payments. “We
found that when [one state government]
started spreading out [SNAP] benefits over
the course of the month, rather than giving benefits on the first of the month, there
was a huge and immediate shift in the level
of crime and theft in grocery stores,” she
says. The declines measured 20 and 28 percent, respectively. While many states have
already switched to a staggered system, the
switch may make even more sense now.
Carr’s research indicates that when a person’s income gets smoothed out over time, it
can lead people to balance out their spending and also reduce extreme behavior. That
switch has the potential to create powerful
ripple effects, because resource-stretched
families feel the impact of the timing of
benefits in countless ways.
For example, early work indicates the
students can see a five-point swing in
SAT performance depending on the date
that their families received benefits and
the date of the test. “Crime, education, and
many other outcomes are things that can
flow from that calorie crunch,” she says.
“Giving people twice-monthly benefits
is one policy prescription that might
[alleviate] the problem.”
DAN CHAVAS,
assistant professor of earth,
atmospheric, and planetary sciences, seeks
to understand how storms work and how
they’ll change in the future. The damage
from these powerful storms can cost billions,
and his work could help us prepare more
effectively to mitigate the damage.
PUR D U E A LU MN I . O RG
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