Crime and Socio-Economic Context

Abstract

Thinking in France on relations between crime rate trend and evolution of socioeconomic context over time is underdeveloped. Recent studies in the United Kingdom suggest that the business cycle influences fluctuations in both property offenses and violent crime. Whereas pre-1970 research in the United States only rarely pointed up a direct link between crime rate and unemployment, post-1970 American studies are dominated by demonstrations of a direct correlation between the two. In this article, analysis of trends in unemployment, prices and wages, marriage among men, and schooling leads to an interpretation of delinquency and crime over the long term in which it is affirmed that an increase in opportunity, such as that attested to by increased consumer prices and wages over time, has a more pronounced role in the strong growth period of the cycle and influences property offenses more than violent crime, and that unemployment among young people without educational degrees is a factor working in favor of both theft and violent crime. This phenomenon was partially masked in periods where it was common to remain in the school system, such as early in the last decade of the twentieth century in France. Lastly, the fact that starting in the early 1980s fewer young people settled in couples and, more generally, the tension in relations between the sexes may also have worked to favor delinquency.

Socio-Economic Development and Violence: An Empirical Application for Seven Metropolitan Areas in Colombia

“…The variable of prices has a positive and significant influence on homicide rates, indicating that an increase in prices generates a higher rate of violence. Lagrange (2003) showed that an increase in opportunities to commit crimes exists when a consumer price trend is increased, which is consistent with our results. In the Colombian case, Dube and Vargas (2008) demonstrated that price shocks affect crime and violence in different ways depending on the factor intensity of the commodity; i.e., the price of natural resources, which are capital intensive, is positively related to violence and crime.…”

Stealing to Survive? Crime and Income Shocks in Nineteenth Century France

“…Our study also relates to the literature on the effects of the business cycle on crime, since the phylloxera crisis constituted a strong negative shock to the French economy. Consistent with our findings, this literature finds that trends in property crimes in the USA and France are countercyclical (Cook and Zarkin, ; Lagrange, ).…”