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Global Perspectives on Social Capital and Health pp 143–166Cite as

Neighborhood Social Capital and Crime

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Abstract

The focus of this chapter is on empirical studies that examined the relationship between social capital and crime. In particular, the chapter emphasizes the problem of the unit of analysis in neighborhood social capital studies and attempts to empirically examine this problem using spatial data and spatial analyses. This chapter is divided into three sections. The first section introduces several studies that have explored the relationship between social capital and crime and the possible mediating factors. The second section addresses the Modifiable Area Unit Problem that is inherent in multilevel models, which are commonly used in public health. The chapter discusses how the effect of social capital on crime varies depending on the spatial scale adopted to define neighborhood boundaries. The third section describes an empirical investigation of the link between community social capital and crime using an innovative tool for spatial analysis – the spatial Durbin model.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Social Psychology, Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 113-0033, Japan

    Daisuke Takagi M.A.

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  1. Daisuke Takagi M.A.
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Correspondence to Daisuke Takagi M.A. .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dept. Social & Behavioral Sciences, Harvard University, Huntington Ave. 677, Boston, 02115, Massachusetts, USA

    Ichiro Kawachi

  2. , Department of Epidemiology, Okayama University Graduate School of Me, Shikata-cho 2-5-1, Okayama City, 700-8558, Japan

    Soshi Takao

  3. Dept Social & Behavioral Sciences, Harvard University, Huntington Ave. 677, Boston, 02115, Massachusetts, USA

    S.V. Subramanian

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Takagi, D. (2013). Neighborhood Social Capital and Crime. In: Kawachi, I., Takao, S., Subramanian, S. (eds) Global Perspectives on Social Capital and Health. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7464-7_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7464-7_6

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