The Crime Kuznets Curve

Serie

• Borradores de investigación

Resumen

• We document the existence of a Crime Kuznets Curve in US states since the 1970s. As income levels have risen, crime has followed an inverted U-shaped pattern, first increasing and then dropping. The Crime Kuznets Curve is not explained by income inequality. In fact, we show that during the sample period inequality has risen monotonically with income, ruling out the traditional Kuznets Curve. Our finding is robust to adding a large set of controls that are used in the literature to explain the incidence of crime, as well as to controlling for state and year fixed effects. The Curve is also revealed in nonparametric specifications. The Crime Kuznets Curve exists for property crime and for some categories of violent crime.

autores

• Buonanno, Paolo
• Fergusson, Leopoldo
• Vargas, Juan Fernando

fecha de publicación

• 2014-04

Área temática

• D63 - Equidad, justicia, desigualdad y otros criterios normativos y de medida
• K42 - Conducta ilegal y aplicación de la ley

Enfoque geográfico

• North America  Continent
• United States of America  Country

Líneas de investigación

• Crime Kuznets Curve Income Inequality
• Non Parametric Kernel Analysis

Issue

• 11043