Talk at MIT Feb 19th: Reducing adult poverty, crime, and violence through behavioral therapy

I’ll be giving the comparative politics seminar 1-230pm. Here’s the paper title and abstract

Reducing adult poverty, crime and violence through late-stage noncognitive investments: Experimental evidence from Liberia

by Christopher Blattman, Julian Jamison, and Margaret Sheridan

Abstract: What to do with poor, violent, criminal young men? We evaluate two interventions to reduce poverty and instability among high-risk Liberian men. We show that self-control and self-image are malleable in adulthood and that building such noncognitive skills reduces crime and violence. The main intervention was an 8-week program of behavioral therapy designed to reduce impulsiveness, manage anger, and increase self-discipline, by fostering skills and a noncriminal self-image. We assigned men to receive therapy, therapy then $200, $200 alone, or neither. Cash alone led to short-lived income gains, dissipating within months. Therapy, however, improved self-control and attitudes to violent and criminal behavior. This drove large, sustained falls in crime and violence, but did not affect other economic decisions (such as investment). The effects of therapy on crime and violence were greatest in concert with the cash, largely we argue because the short-lived boost to legal employment reinforced therapy’s behavioral changes.

27 Responses

  1. Very interesting. Wondering if the same results would be able to be applied to repatriation and deradicalization efforts aimed toward impoverished youth who sign on with criminal and/or extremist groups. That’s a large jump to make and all kinds of environmental and threat factors would be pretty confounding, but the premise would seem to be supportive? Possibly tying that with experiences of youth removed from environments of violence as emigrants etc.