Do Larger Cities Experience Lower Crime Rates? A Scaling Analysis of 758 Cities in the U.S

Yu Sang Chang, Hann Earl Kim and Seongmin Jeon
Additional contact information
Yu Sang Chang: Gachon Center for Convergence Research, Gachon University, 1342 Seongnam-daero, Sujung-gu, Gyeonggi-do 13120, Korea
Hann Earl Kim: Department of Global Business, Gachon University, 1342 Seongnam-daero, Sujung-gu, Gyeonggi-do 13120, Korea
Seongmin Jeon: Department of Global Business, Gachon University, 1342 Seongnam-daero, Sujung-gu, Gyeonggi-do 13120, Korea

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 11, 1-16

Abstract: Do larger cities still suffer from higher crime rates? The scaling relationship between the number of crimes and the population size for the maximum of 758 cities with more than 50,000 inhabitants in the United States from 1999 to 2014 was analyzed. For the total group of cities, the relationship is superlinear for both violent and property crimes. However, for the subgroups of the top 12, top 24, and top 50 largest cities, the relationship changes to sublinear for both violent and property crimes. Results from the panel data analysis are in support of these findings. Along with population size, income per capita and population density also influence the outcome of crime counts. Implications from these findings will be discussed.

Keywords: violent crime counts; property crime counts; population size of city; superlinear relationship; sublinear relationship; linear relationship (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/11/3111/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/11/3111/ (text/html)

Related works:
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:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:11:p:3111-:d:236609

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().