Job Market Paper
You, Shijun, Wei Fu, and Shin-Yi Chou. "Communities in Action: Drug-Free Communities and Juvenile Drug Crime."
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The Drug-Free Communities (DFC) Support Program, established in 1997 through the Drug-Free Communities Act, aims to mitigate substance use among youth. This study examines the impacts of the DFC granting on juveniles in the United States from 2008 to 2019. Using a difference-in-differences (DID) model exploiting the staggered grant allocation to communities, we find that the DFC grants significantly curtail juvenile drug-related criminal activities. The potential mechanisms include reductions in marijuana use and opioid-related inpatient stays and improved academic performance among juveniles. In the auxiliary analysis, we also find positive impacts of DFC grants on reducing juvenile property crime and drug-related mortality. This study, to our knowledge, marks the first attempt to causally identify the impacts of DFCs on community well-being. Our comprehensive evaluation offers insights into the significance of collective community action in combating substance use, particularly amid the recent opioid crisis.Publications
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Bradford, Ashley C., Wei Fu, and Shijun You. "The Devastating Dance between Opioid and Housing Crises: Evidence from OxyContin Reformulation." Journal of Health Economics (2024): Forthcoming. [pdf]
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Housing instability and drug misuse are two of the United States' most pressing challenges, each bearing profound health and societal consequences. A crucial yet largely underexplored question is the extent to which the opioid crisis has intensified housing instability. Our study ventures into this relatively uncharted nexus, investigating how the OxyContin reformulation, a pivotal moment in the U.S. opioid epidemic, impacted eviction rates. Employing a dose-response Difference-in-Differences model and analyzing eviction data from 2004 to 2016, we demonstrate that the OxyContin reformulation precipitated a significant increase in evictions, especially in areas with weak eviction protections or limited access to psychiatric treatment resources. Channel analyses reveal increased marijuana initiation and heightened mental and physical health issues following the reformulation. Moreover, the OxyContin reformulation leads to greater reliance on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, signaling an escalated financial strain on governmental resources. Finally, we find evidence of increased marital disruption post-reformulation. Our findings underscore the urgent need for collaborative efforts between public health and housing authorities to address both the opioid and housing crises.
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Huang, Chen, Feng Liu, and Shijun You. "The impact of minimum wage increases on cigarette smoking." Health Economics 30, no. 9 (2021): 2063-2091. [pdf]
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Recent debate about raising federal minimum wage to $15 per hour receives substantial public attention. Yet the minimum wage literature has been focusing on the labor market outcomes, with the health implications rarely being discussed. This paper investigates the impact of minimum wage increases on multiple dimensions of cigarette smoking behaviors for the low‐skilled population using the Current Population Survey‐Tobacco Use Supplement over a long time period (1998–2015). Results show that a $1 increase in the minimum wage raises the prevalence of smoking by about 2.3% and reduces cessation by about 13.7% among the low‐skilled workers. With further examinations, we find evidence of an income effect as one potential mechanism that leads to more smoking. The impacts on all low‐skilled adults, however, are somewhat smaller, which are most likely driven by the null effects among those who are out of the labor force. We additionally conduct a series of sensitivity tests and confirm the robustness of these results.Working Papers
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Aslim, Erkmen G., Wei Fu, Erdal Tekin, and Shijun You. From syringes to dishes: Improving food security through vaccination. No. w31045. National Bureau of Economic Research, 2023. R&R to the Journal of Public Economics. [NBER link]
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This paper examines the impact of COVID-19 vaccination on food insufficiency in the United States, using data from the Household Pulse Survey. Our primary research design exploits variation in vaccine eligibility across states over time as an instrumental variable to address the endogeneity of vaccination decision. We find that vaccination had a substantial impact on food hardship by reducing the likelihood of food insufficiency by 24%, with even stronger effects among minority and financially disadvantaged populations. These results are robust to alternative specifications and the use of regression discontinuity as an alternative identification strategy. We also show that vaccine eligibility had a positive spillover impact on food assistance programs, notably reducing participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and the use of its benefits, suggesting that vaccination policies can help alleviate the government's fiscal burden during public health crises. Our analysis offers detailed insights into the potential mechanisms linking vaccination to food insufficiency. We demonstrate that vaccination yields changes in both material circumstances and financial expectations. Specifically, vaccination increases the use of regular income for spending needs and reduces reports of insufficient food due to unaffordability. Additionally, we find that vaccination improves financial optimism, reflected in expectations for future employment income loss and the ability to meet mortgage and debt obligations. Our findings are consistent with the notion that this optimism, along with labor market recovery, diminished the need for precautionary savings, reduced reliance on government assistance, and encouraged household spending on essential goods like food, ultimately lowering food insufficiency.
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You, Shijun, Wei Fu, and Shin-Yi Chou. "Treatment Over Punishment in Combating Drug Crime: Evidence From the Introduction of Adult Drug Courts."
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Drug courts provide eligible individuals with drug treatment as an alternative to incarceration and aim to reduce recidivism. However, its impact on overall drug crime has not been extensively studied. In this study, we leverage the staggered implementation of county-level Adult Drug Courts (ADCs) from 2001 to 2012 and use the difference-in-differences approaches that account for treatment heterogeneity to examine their effectiveness in curbing drug crime. In the first-stage results, we find a 42.2% rise in the drug treatment rate in the presence of ADCs but no effects on drug-related mortality. Innovatively, we decompose the total effects into effects on first-time drug crime and recidivism through a theoretical model and empirically test them. Our primary results show that the implementation of ADCs significantly reduced the 1-year and 2-year recidivism of drug offenses by 33.93% and 30.56%, respectively, and has a weak reduction for the 3-year recidivism. Moreover, we find that ADCs significantly increased the first drug arrest by 31.05%. The aggregation of these two effects yields a 24.49% - 25.25% net increase in overall drug offenses, which is further confirmed by a 13.31% rise from alternative data. In sum, our study unveils the unintended consequences of leniency in drug crime punishment, suggesting a need for intensifying ADC programs, possibly by adding more phases and enhancing graduation rates for participants.
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You, Shijun, and Shin-Yi Chou. "Air Pollution and Health of Working-Age Population: Evidence from Thermal Inversion."
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Despite the significant impact of air pollution on public health, its causal effects on a national scale have not been extensively studied. In this paper, we examine the impact of PM2.5 on adult health in the United States using data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System for 2001-2012, focusing on a period of relatively low pollution levels. To address the endogeneity issue, we use the two-stage least-squares regression with thermal inversion as an instrumental variable. Our findings provide evidence of the ongoing negative impact of air pollution on overall health. Specifically, we observe that a 1 unit rise in PM2.5 is associated with a significant increase in the number of mentally unwell days by 0.11 and an increase in asthma incidence by 0.16 percentage points. Additionally, our cost-benefit analysis demonstrates that the marginal benefit of improving PM2.5 standards far exceeds the associated marginal cost.Work In Progress
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"Effects of Medical Cannabidiols Legalization on Labor Market." (with Shin-Yi Chou and Wei Fu)
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"Racial Diversity and Prosocial Behaviors." (with Shin-Yi Chou and Wei Fu)