Ron Paul seems to be cool!

[Wezil]

I have to go pretend to work for a couple hours. This should give you time to find the right graph. I'll be looking for the high spike in the 30's.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Speaking of Crime in the Depression:

http://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/12825.html

After constructing a panel data set for 83 large American cities for the years 1930 through 1940, we estimated the impact of relief spending by all levels of government on crime rates. The analysis suggests that relief spending during the 1930s lowered property crime in a statistically and economically significant way. A lower bound ordinary least squares estimate suggests that a 10 percent increase in per capita relief spending during the Great Depression lowered property crime rates by close to 1 percent. After controlling for potential endogeneity using an instrumental variables approach, the estimates suggest that a 10 percent increase in per capita relief spending lowered crime rates by roughly 5.6 to 10 percent at the margin. More generally, our results indicate that social insurance, which tends to be understudied in economic analyses of crime, should be more explicitly and more carefully incorporated into the analysis of temporal and spatial variations in criminal activity.

[Imran Siddiqui]

More fun:

http://ideas.repec.org/a/ucp/jlawec/v44y2001i1p259-83.html

We find significantly positive effects of unemployment on property crime rates that are stable across model specifications. Our estimates suggest that a substantial portion of the decline in property crime rates during the 1990s is attributable to the decline in the unemployment rate. The evidence for violent crime is considerably weaker. However, a closer analysis of the violent crime of rape yields some evidence that the employment prospects of males are weakly related to state rape rates.

Obviously poverty would increase property crime rates (have to get stuff to feed your family or sell to buy food).

[Wezil]

:yawn:

Show me the stats. What are you afraid of?

[Imran Siddiqui]

From the University of Linz in Austria (previous paper was from UChicago):

http://ideas.repec.org/p/cdl/ucsdec/98-19.html

Previous estimates of the effect of unemployment on crime commonly omit determinants of criminal behavior that vary with the business cycle, creating correlation between unemployment rates and the residuals in aggregate crime regressions. In this paper, we employ several strategies that attempt to minimize or break this correlation and eliminate the accompanying omitted variables bias to estimates of the effect of unemployment on crime. Using a state-level panel for the period from 1970 to 1993, we explore the sensitivity of crime-unemployment elasticity estimates to explicit controls for per-capita alcohol consumption, a factor that has been shown in the past to be pro-cyclical and a partial determinant of criminal behavior. In addition, we use prime defense contracts per-capita at the state level as an instrument for state unemployment rates. Both controlling for alcohol consumption and using instrumental variables to correct for omitted variables bias yields large effects of unemployment on the seven felony offenses recorded by the Department of Justice. Moreover, in contrast to previous research, we find significant and sizable positive effects of unemployment on the rates of specific violent, as well as property crimes.

Whether violent crimes depend on poverty seems to be up in the air, but it appears property crime's relation to poverty is not.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by Wezil
:yawn:

Show me the stats. What are you afraid of?

You can read the papers if you want to. Follow the links, look at the methodology. They actually control for other factors as well in making a ceterus parabis determination.

Another:

http://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/scandj/v107y2005i2p353-373.html

A panel of Swedish counties over the years 1988-1999 is used to study the effects of unemployment on property crime rates. The period under study is characterized by turbulence in the labor market-the variation in unemployment rates was unprecedented in the latter part of the century. Hence, the data provide a unique opportunity to examine unemployment effects. According to the theory of economics of crime, increased unemployment rates lead to higher property crime rates. A fixed-effects model is estimated to investigate this hypothesis. The model includes time- and county-specific effects and a number of economic and socio-demographic variables to control for unobservables and covariates. The results show that unemployment had a positive and significant effect on some property crimes (burglary, car theft and bike theft).

[Imran Siddiqui]

And, of course, the uber controversial:

http://ideas.repec.org/a/tpr/qjecon/v116y2001i2p379-420.html

We offer evidence that legalized abortion has contributed significantly to recent crime reductions. Crime began to fall roughly eighteen years after abortion legalization. The five states that allowed abortion in 1970 experienced declines earlier than the rest of the nation, which legalized in 1973 with Roe v. Wade. States with high abortion rates in the 1970s and 1980s experienced greater crime reductions in the 1990s. In high abortion states, only arrests of those born after abortion legalization fall relative to low abortion states. Legalized abortion appears to account for as much as 50 percent of the recent drop in crime.

[Wezil]

*sigh* I guess the US didn't keep these stats in the 30's.

Imran - There are may extremely poor nations around the world with crime rates considerably lower the that of the wealthy US (or Can - this isn't a US bash).

I won't argue that no one ever stole a loaf of bread to feed their family but to defend the position that "poverty causes crime" is just plain insulting to poor people.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Wezil
*sigh* I guess the US didn't keep these stats in the 30's.

Imran - There are may extremely poor nations around the world with crime rates considerably lower the that of the wealthy US (or Can - this isn't a US bash).

It's not absolute poverty that causes crime, but relative poverty.

I won't argue that no one ever stole a loaf of bread to feed their family but to defend the position that "poverty causes crime" is just plain insulting to poor people.

The reverse is actually true.

[Wezil]

Originally posted by Agathon


It's not absolute poverty that causes crime, but relative poverty.

Absolutely. If you look around and come to the conclusion you are getting f***** while others prosper you may get a tad p'd off.

But that is the injustice causing it, not the poverty.

[Slade Wilson]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
And, of course, the uber controversial:

http://ideas.repec.org/a/tpr/qjecon/v116y2001i2p379-420.html

We offer evidence that legalized abortion has contributed significantly to recent crime reductions. Crime began to fall roughly eighteen years after abortion legalization. The five states that allowed abortion in 1970 experienced declines earlier than the rest of the nation, which legalized in 1973 with Roe v. Wade. States with high abortion rates in the 1970s and 1980s experienced greater crime reductions in the 1990s. In high abortion states, only arrests of those born after abortion legalization fall relative to low abortion states. Legalized abortion appears to account for as much as 50 percent of the recent drop in crime.

No duh, because the abortions stop being illegal

You can prove anything with statistics

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by Slade Wilson
No duh, because the abortions stop being illegal

You can prove anything with statistics

Uhhh... that's not exactly it. I believe Levitt (the guy who co-wrote "Freakonomics", btw) and Donohue are referring to the crime rate taking out the abortion arrests (though I don't believe there were all that many... I mean, most of the time when it was illegal, it was done in homes with coat hangers rather than at doctor's offices... doctors tend not to want to lose their license).

I mean Levitt and Donohue are pretty respected economists .

[Berzerker]

yeah, not many women charged with crimes for having illegal abortions. But their argument was that legalized abortion reduced the population of potential criminals from higher risk groups. If young males from messed up situations commit crimes more than other groups, then more abortions within that group reduces crime.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
It is easier to have a moral code to live by when you are getting enough to eat .

When your morals (assuming you have them) are preventing you from what you want you change them. Rich people do this just as quick as poor people.

[Straybow]

Originally posted by Berzerker

That's because when you attempt to strip away culture, religion, and ideology you get chaos, gangs and organized crime, and then a dictatorship to "restore order." Kinda like what happens when the meta-stable communist version of libertarianism finally collapses.

Yeah, tell Muslim women in the Middle East about why their culture should trump their freedom. And it aint about stripping away anything, libertarianism supports culture, religion, etc., but it opposes making us practice someone else's religion. If you dont like a book, dont read it...

That's different because their culture sucks.