Crime and Local Inequality in South Africa
By Gabriel Demombynes, Berk Özler. 2002
394 citations recorded by the source corpus.
The authors examine the effects of local inequality on property and violent crime in South Africa. Their findings are consistent with economic theories relating inequality to property crime, and also with sociological theories that imply that inequality leads to crime in general. Burglary rates are 20-30 percent higher in police station jurisdictions that are the wealthiest among their neighbors, suggesting that criminals travel to neighborhoods where the expected returns from burglary are highest. The authors do not find evidence that inequality between racial groups fosters interpersonal conflict at the local level.
Subfields: Sociology and Political Science, Urban Studies
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0ac4f47f6d73de6b1737f8e204eee38db34fe1f2
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In Sociology and Political Science
- Alessandro Tarozzi
- Maarten Vansteenkiste
- Bart Soenens
- W. Beyers
- Samuel Olorunfemi Adams
- Florian Baumann
- Tim Friehe
- Angus Deaton
In Urban Studies
Citations in the corpus
- Status Concerns as a Motive for Crime? (2015, result): “…association between inequality and crime has in most contributions established a positive link between the two (see Dahlberg and Gustavsson 2008, Demombynes and Özler 2005, Fajnzylber et al. 2002, Whitworth 2012, forthcoming), although other results have also been found (see Kelly 2000 and…”
- Income inequality and violent crime : evidence from Mexico's drug war (2014, neutral): “As discussed by Demombynes and Ozler (2005), the expected gains from criminal activity rise with the mean income at the local level.”
- Using Census and Survey Data to Estimate Poverty and Inequality for Small Areas (2009, methodology): “The poverty maps constructed by the World Bank or with their assistance make use of an alternative estimation method proposed by Elbers et al. 2003 (ELL for brevity). Like our estimator, ELL requires the validity of both MP and of the area homogeneity assumption AH. Unlike the estimator described in”
- Electricity access and income inequality in South Africa: Evidence from Bayesian and NARDL analyses (2020, background): “Some studies have also shown a high correlation between inequality and environmental pollution in South Africa [19,20].”
- Does Psychological Need Satisfaction Matter When Environmental or Financial Safety are at Risk? (2015, background): “Study 1 Study 1 focused on the role of environmental safety in South Africa, a country known for its high rates of criminality and violence (e.g., Demombynes & Özlerb, 2005), as shown for instance in the high incidence of rape (e.g., Jewkes & Abrahams, 2002).”