Economic Assistance and Crime

Abstract

Many countries struggle with the question of appropriate social welfare spending. Here we test several hypotheses about the dynamics between social welfare spending and crime. We do so using pooled, cross-national time-series data. Our findings suggest that per capita social welfare spending is associated with lower rates of both theft and homicide. Time lagged analysis suggests that the current level of social welfare spending, not that of recent years, accounts for any possible suppression of crime. The data also suggest that, whereas high homicide rates do not appear to inspire increased social welfare generosity, lagged measures of theft rates are associated with subsequent increases in social welfare spending among high theft countries.