Crime and Mental Wellbeing

Francesca Cornaglia and Andrew Leigh

CEP Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Performance, LSE

Abstract: Most estimates of the cost of crime focus on victims. Yet it is plausible that an even larger cost of crime occurs via its indirect impact on the mental wellbeing of non-victims. To test how crime affects individuals' mental outcomes, we exploit detailed panel data on mental wellbeing, allowing us to observe the relationship between changes in crime in a local area and changes in the mental wellbeing of resident non-victims in that area (controlling for changes in local economic conditions). Our results suggest that increases in crime rates have a negative impact on the mental wellbeing of residents, with the biggest impacts arising from violent crime. We also find that local press coverage of criminal activity enhances the effect of crime on mental well-being.

Keywords: neighbourhood effects; health; mental health; fear of crime (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I18 K14 R28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-law, nep-soc and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (19)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/dp1049.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Crime and Mental Well-Being (2014)
Working Paper: Crime and Mental Wellbeing (2014)
Working Paper: Crime and mental wellbeing (2012)
Working Paper: Crime and mental wellbeing (2011)
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:cep:cepdps:dp1049

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEP Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Performance, LSE
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().