Income inequality and crime: The case of Sweden

Anna Nilsson
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Anna Nilsson: Department of Economics, Stockholm University, Postal: 106 91 Stockholm

No 2004:6, Working Paper Series from IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy

Abstract: The degree of income inequality in Sweden has varied substantially since the 1970s. This study analyzes whether this variation has affected the crime rate using a panel of Swedish county-level data for the period 1973–2000. We consider various measures of income inequality to evaluate which part of the distribution that matters most in determining crime rates. Our results indicate that there is a statistically significant positive effect of the proportion of the population with an income below 10 percent of median income on the incidence of property crime. Moreover, the unemployment rate has a positive effect on the incidence of the number of overall crime, auto thefts and robberies. The results look different for the violent crime category assault

Keywords: Crime; income inequality; panel data (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D31 I32 J00 K40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 34 pages
Date: 2004-05-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-eec and nep-law
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (23)

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