Unemployment and Crime Rates in the Post-World War II United States: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis

Cycles in Crime and Economy: Leading, Lagging and Coincident Behaviors

“…We notice that the maximum correlation is at the same time, but also at lags 1 and -1 (which corresponds to a lead 1) the correlation is more than 0.5 in absolute terms. Moreover, the sign of correlations is always negative (apart lag and lead 6, which are near zero), which is consistent with the idea that, during business cycle expansions, crime level decreases according to the motivation effect (Cantor and Land, 1985), whereas the opposite works during recessions. In terms of mean delay, the model classifies TCR as a lagged variable with respect to GDP, consistently with the theory that criminal agents seem to react with some delay to economic fluctuations.…”

“…A number of works measure the effect of the business cycle on crime rate implementing univariate time series or VAR approaches (Cantor and Land, 1985, Cook and Zarkin, 1985, Corman et al, 1987, Arvanites and Defina, 2006. In general, the findings show that property crimes seem to have a significant counter-cyclical component while crimes against persons are not as sensitive to variations in economic activity.…”

“…By using annual panel data, Arvanites and Defina (2006) show that an improving economy reduces property crimes. Cantor and Land (1985) theorize the macroeconomic relationship between economic performance and criminal activity. They indicate two opposite strands of criminal behavior: motivation effect and opportunity effect.…”

“…The latter works in the opposite way: the opportunities to commit crime (widespread availability of goods and profitable illegal activities) increase along with the economic performance. According to Cantor and Land (1985), the motivational effect works in the long-run because "those recently made jobless have a stock of resources (savings, unemployment, welfare) that they can immediately draw upon and first must exhaust before feeling the financial pinch of unemployment" (Paternoster and Bushway, 2001), while the opportunity effect works in the short run because the ups and downs of the employment rate quickly impact the circulation of people and goods, affecting the attitude towards crime. Unfortunately, as argued by Paternoster and Bushway (2001), the relationship between crime and the business cycle may not be so straightforward: the counter and pro-cyclical behavior to commit crime can be fuelled by different criminal characteristics or attitudes, and not just by temporal lag effects.…”

Violent Crime in the United States of America: A Time-Series Analysis Between 1960–2000

“…7 My argument, however, is that if there is an attempt to establish a link between unemployment and violent crime, long-term indicators of unemployment rather than the overall unemployment rate might be better predictors. 8 Long-term unemployment may decrease the possibility of future employment, exhaust short-term financial resources (Cantor and Land, 1985), provoke frustration and social upheavals and may contribute to reducing the individual's moral values which may result in a turn to crime and delinquency (see Box, 1987).…”