Does Violent Crime Deter Physical Activity?

Katharina Janke (), Carol Propper and Michael Shields

No 7545, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Crime has been argued to have important externalities. We investigate the relationship between violent crime and an important type of behaviour: individuals' participation in their local area through walking and physical activity. We use a sample of nearly 1 million people residing in over 320 small areas in England between 2005 and 2011. We show that concerns about personal safety co-move with police recorded violent crime. To identify the causal effect of recorded violent crime on walking and other physical activity we control for individual-level characteristics, non-time varying local authority effects, national time effects and local authority-specific trends. In addition, we exploit a natural experiment that caused a sudden increase in crime – the 2011 England riots – to identify the causal impact of a large exogenous crime shock on physical activity in a triple difference framework. Our results show a substantive deterrent effect of local area violent crime on walking, pointing to important effects of violent crime on non-victims. The adverse effect of an increase in local area violent crime from the 25th to the 75th percentile on walking is equivalent in size to a 6°C fall in average minimum temperature.

Keywords: violent crime; walking; physical activity; riots (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I12 I18 R23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 38 pages
Date: 2013-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Published - published in: Journal of Health Economics, 2016, 47, 34-49.

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Related works:
Working Paper: Does Violent Crime Deter Physical Activity? (2013)
Working Paper: Does Violent Crime Deter Physical Activity? (2013)
Working Paper: Does Violent Crime Deter Physical Activity? (2013)
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