Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP9605
Authors: Katharina Janke; Carol Propper; Michael Shields
Abstract: Crime has been argued to have important externalities. We investigate the relationship between violent crime and an important type of behaviour: individuals? participation in their local area through walking and physical activity. We use a sample of nearly 1 million people residing in over 320 small areas in England between 2005 and 2011. We show that concerns about personal safety co-move with police recorded violent crime. To identify the causal effect of recorded violent crime on walking and other physical activity we control for individual-level characteristics, non-time varying local authority effects, national time effects and local authority-specific trends. In addition, we exploit a natural experiment that caused a sudden increase in crime ? the 2011 England riots ? to identify the causal impact of a large exogenous crime shock on physical activity in a triple difference framework. Our results show a substantive deterrent effect of local area violent crime on walking, pointing to important effects of violent crime on non-victims. The adverse effect of an increase in local area violent crime from the 25th to the 75th percentile on walking is equivalent in size to a 6 C fall in average minimum temperature.
Keywords: physical activity; riots; violent crime; walking
JEL Codes: I12; I18; R23
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| increased violent crime in local areas (K42) | reduction in walking (I14) |
| increased violent crime (K42) | heightened worries about personal safety (I39) |
| heightened worries about personal safety (I39) | reduction in walking (I14) |
| increased violent crime (K42) | reduction in transport walking (R41) |
| increased violent crime (K42) | reduction in leisure walking (R41) |
| increased violent crime (K42) | greater reduction in walking for females than males (J16) |