A factor analysis of socio-economic determinants of property crimes in cities

Abstract

In the past a number of studies on the economics of crime have emphasized the importance of deterrence in crime prevention while assigning lesser importance to socio-economic determinants. Others have concentrated on the role of the socio-economic variables in crime production and have utilized the multiple regression analysis which has produced ambiguous results due to the presence of strong multicollinearity among independent variables. This paper is concerned with socio-economic determinants of urban property crimes, and utilizes factor analysis to overcome the problems associated with multicollinearity. Three factors are extracted out of twelve variables with data from the 47 of the largest cities in Ohio in 1970. The three factors are used as independent variables in the linear regression analysis for different types of property crimes. The highlights of the findings are that economic forces play an important role in the determination of property crimes but in addition other sociological variables which represent attitudes, tradition, mores and values are also important. “Ethnicity” or variables associated with community stability seem to discourage deviant behavior and thus crime. Economists may, therefore, need to give greater attention to these variables.