Uncovering the Gender Participation Gap in Crime

Nadia Campaniello () and Evelina Gavrilova

Economics Discussion Papers from University of Essex, Department of Economics

Abstract: Research on the gender variation in the crime market, a peculiar labor market for illegal activities, is limited, although the issue is relevant per se and for its policy implications. We document a gender gap in criminal activities, based on property and white collar crimes, using data from the U.S. National Incident Based Reporting System. We show that there is a gender participation gap where around 30 percent of the crimes are committed by females. In order to explain, at least in part, the gender participation gap we investigate whether there are differences in incentives to be involved in criminal activities and in responsiveness to these incentives across gender. In particular we focus on criminal earnings and probability of arrest. We show that on average females earn 18 percent less than males while they face the same likelihood of arrest. We find that females are more responsive to changes in the expected probability of arrest, while males respond more to changes in the expected illegal earnings. The fact that females behave differently than males has implications for the heterogeneity in response to crime control policies. In addition, using a Blinder-Oaxaca type decomposition technique, we find that differences in incentives explain about 12 percent of the gender crime gap, while differences in responsiveness explain about 55 percent of the gap.

Keywords: HB; HV (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-01-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gen, nep-law and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://repository.essex.ac.uk/18833/ original version (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Uncovering the gender participation gap in crime (2018)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:esx:essedp:18833

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
Discussion Papers Administrator, Department of Economics, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester CO4 3SQ, U.K.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Economics Discussion Papers from University of Essex, Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Essex Economics Web Manager ().