Crime, earnings inequality and unemployment in England and Wales

Abstract

Masih and Masih (1996) recently presented an analysis of crime in a temporal Granger-causal framework, and explored empirically some of the determinants of crime in Australia using annual data over the period 1963–90. The purpose of this paper is to examine the role exerted by earnings inequality and unemployment in the determination of crime. Using a panel of annual regional data from 1979 to 1993 for England and Wales, we find that the growth in earnings inequality and unemployment impact positively on five types of criminal activity examined.