Examining the impact of housing security on urban crime rates and aggregation: a Chinese case study

Hua Zhang, Miao Zhang, Xingyu Su and Baomin Wang

Applied Economics, 2025, vol. 57, issue 45, 7303-7318

Abstract: Indemnificatory housing under the background of Housing Security helps to curb the rise of crime rates, but also attracts low-income groups. They have a demand for housing, but it is difficult for them to rely on their own to solve the housing problem. The aggregation of low-income groups will lead to a decrease in social norms and moral constraints, and will produce ‘Crime Aggregation’ effect. Using panel data from 31 provincial-level regions in China from 2012–2021, this paper explored the effect of Housing Security Level on the overall crime rate. Further, a multi-period double difference model was constructed to analyse whether the construction of affordable housing leads to crime aggregation. The results showed that the crime rate showed a decreasing trend as the Housing Security Level increased. There was no significant change in the crime rate in the Xi’an, China before and after the indemnificatory housing construction. Xi’an has a more rational spatial planning and is not densely built up, resulting in fewer conflicts; in addition, due to China’s local characteristics of its social structural system, residents come from different cities rather than different countries and races, which weakens the effectiveness of social disintegration and has minimal impact on crime.

Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1080/00036846.2024.2388309

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