Age Gradient in Women's Crime: The Role of Welfare Reform.

We investigate how welfare reform in the U.S. in the 1990s shaped the age gradient in women's property crime arrests. Using Federal Bureau of Investigation data, we investigated the age-patterning of effects of welfare reform on women's arrests for property crime, the type of crime that welfare reform has been shown to affect. We found that welfare reform reduced women's property crime arrests by about 4%, with particularly strong effects for women ages 25-29, slightly stronger effects in states with stricter work incentives, and much stronger in states with high per capita criminal justice expenditures.