Applied Economics Lunch Seminar

Du 02/04/2024

R2-21

URAZ Juliet-Nil (LSE)

The Impact of Reduced Access to Civil Legal Assistance: Evidence from England and Wales

In 2013, England and Wales implemented a comprehensive legal aid reform, removing publicly funded legal assistance for low-income households confronting social welfare issues. The reform acted as a large funding shock, resulting in uneven closure and congestion among legal assistance providers. This paper examines the far-reaching consequences of this reform on access to justice and socioeconomic outcomes for vulnerable populations, as well as mortality rates. Constructing panel data on the activity of legal assistance providers between 2011 and 2022, we adopt a difference-in-differences approach to assess the dynamic effects of the reform on eviction court cases, housing market tension indices and mortality rates. Our analysis leverages the exogenous spatial and temporal variation in access to legal assistance providers, considering changes in distance and congestion of the nearest provider. By adopting estimation procedures corrected for heterogeneity, we quantify the cumulative impact of reduced access to free, in-person legal assistance on outcomes with lasting socioeconomic implications. This study sheds light on an overlooked program targeting households at risk of homelessness and over-indebtedness, providing empirical insights essential for elucidating the unintended socioeconomic and public health consequences of legal reforms.