Determinantes socioeconòmicos y demogràficos del crimen en Chile

Abstract

This paper is a first attempt at analyzing the determinants of crime in Chile. We\nemploy a static panel for the thirteen regions of Chile from 1988 to 2000. Following\nthe standard Becker-Ehrlich model, the empirical model includes various\nvariables linked to incentives to commit crimes, such as legal and illegal\nincome (from labor and crime, respectively), legal income opportunities (captured\nby regional unemployment) and a measure of regional police efficiency,\nmeasured as the ratio of crime reports and captures. In addition, we include\ndemographic and socioeconomic variables that may also explain the evolution\nand dispersion of crime, namely the gender, age and urban-rural composition\nof the population, human capital variables (schooling and literacy), and various\nrelative and absolute poverty measures.\nThe main conclusion is that the incentive-related variables explain an important\npart of the variation of economically-motivated crimes; Robbery, Drugs\nand Fraud. However, except for the unemployment rate, these variables do not\nexplain the variation of other, largely non economically-motivated crimes,\nnamely Rapes, Murder and Manslaughter, and Physical aggression.\nFinally, while the gender, age and urban-rural composition of the population\nexplain part of the variation of crime, we find that human capital and poverty\nmeasures do not offer robust and conclusive results, which confirms what has\nbeen consistently reported in the empirical literature.