Does Urbanization Cause Crime? Evidence from Rural-Urban Migration in South Africa

Nelly Exbrayat and Victor Stephane

No 2401, Working Papers from Groupe d'Analyse et de Théorie Economique Lyon St-Étienne (GATE Lyon St-Étienne), Université de Lyon

Abstract: We study the impact of urbanization driven by internal migration on crime in South Africa. We create a new dataset that combines yearly data on crime and urban population density at the municipality level from 2011 to 2018. We exploit exogenous variations in rural-urban migration induced by climate shocks at origin for identification. We show that higher urban population density leads to a reduction in pecuniary crime rate but has no effect on non-pecuniary crime rate. We highlight two mechanisms explaining this negative effect: a change in population composition and a social network effect.

Keywords: Crime; Migration; South Africa; Urbanization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O18 R23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr, nep-dev, nep-mig and nep-ure
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https://www.gate.cnrs.fr/RePEc/2024/2401.pdf (application/pdf)

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Working Paper: Does Urbanization Cause Crime? Evidence from Rural-Urban Migration in South Africa (2024)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gat:wpaper:2401

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