WHAT PART OF THE INCOME DISTRIBUTION MATTERS FOR EXPLAINING PROPERTY CRIME? THE CASE OF COLOMBIA

Jairo Nunez (), Fabio Sanchez Torres and François Bourguignon

No 3775, Documentos CEDE from Universidad de los Andes, Facultad de Economía, CEDE

Abstract: Inequality has always been taken as a major explanatory factor of the rate of crime. Yet, the evidence in favor of that hypothesis is weak. Pure cross-sectional analyses show significant positive effects but do not control for fixed effects. Time series and panel data point to a variety of results, but few turn out being significant. The hypothesis maintained in this paper is that it is a specific part of the distribution, rather than the overall distribution as summarized by conventional inequality measures, that is most likely to influence the rate of (property) crime in a given society. Using a simple theoretical model and panel data in 7 Colombian cities over a 20 year period, we design a method that permits identifying the precise segment of the population whose relative income best explains time changes in crime.

Keywords: Crime; economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 23
Date: 2003-03-31
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:col:000089:003775

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