Victimization and Life Satisfaction: Evidence from a High Crime Country

Nekeisha Spencer () and Zhonghui Liu ()
Additional contact information
Nekeisha Spencer: University of the West Indies
Zhonghui Liu: Binghamton University

Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, 2019, vol. 144, issue 1, No 19, 475-495

Abstract: Abstract This study quantifies the relationship between crime and life satisfaction for Jamaica, a country that records the highest rates for violent crimes relative to the rest of the world and has one of the highest regional crime expenditure. We utilize individual-level survey data from 2006–2014 that capture victimization and other characteristics related to life satisfaction. Controlling for potential confounders reveals that crime is significantly and negatively related to life satisfaction. More importantly, we find that for this high-crime country, the cost to life satisfaction of being a crime victim amounts to roughly 65% of annual household expenditure. We also find heterogeneous effects for reported assault and robbery even though only the monetary losses incurred from assault are economically significant.

Keywords: Crime; Life satisfaction; High-crime country; Jamaica (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11205-018-2042-9 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:soinre:v:144:y:2019:i:1:d:10.1007_s11205-018-2042-9

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11135

DOI: 10.1007/s11205-018-2042-9

Access Statistics for this article

Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement is currently edited by Filomena Maggino

More articles in Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().