Employment Opportunities and Crime: The Relationship Between Unemployment and the Propensity to Commit Crime
Date
2011
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Haverford College. Department of Economics
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eng
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Haverford users only
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Abstract
This paper presents evidence on the relationship between employment opportunities and crime using state unemployment rates and individual weeks of unemployment per year as explanatory variables. The relationship depends on whether employment and crime are substitutes or complements, or the interaction between propensity and opportunity to commit crime. Results of both state-level natural experiments and individual-level regressions indicate that the relationship between employment opportunities and crime is substantially different during different time periods and that it is has become more negative over time. Furthermore, estimates using data from the past two business cycles indicate that the relationship between employment opportunities and property crime is not economically significant and not clearly positive or negative. Violent crime on the other hand appears to be positively related to employment opportunities, suggesting that violent crime is particularly responsive to the opportunity to commit crime. These results call into question whether crime will increase in the current economic downturn. Furthermore, results indicate that the link between employment opportunities and crime may be economically insignificant and that criminal justice policy targeting recidivism through jobs programs might be better spent targeting other factors.