Do Immigrants Increase Crime? Spatial Analysis in a Middle-Income Country
Date
2020
Type:
Article
item.page.extent
33 p.
item.page.accessRights
item.contributor.advisor
ORCID:
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
item.page.isbn
item.page.issn
item.page.issne
item.page.doiurl
item.page.other
item.page.references
Abstract
The last decade has seen a significant global increase in immigration. This large growth has caused an increasing opposition to immigration in local populations in many parts of the world, partly because of a commonly held belief that immigration increases crime. Using data from Chile, spanning 10 years, from 2005 to 2015, we analyze the relationship between immigration and crime through a dynamic Spatial Durbin Model (SDM), which accounts for the possible bias for omitted variables. As the spatial model is dynamic and based on panel data, it is possible to identify direct and indirect effects on both the short- (the same period) and long-term (next period) bases. Our results show that there is no statistical evidence to link an increase in the number of immigrants to a rise in the rate of any type of crime. If any, we found a negative relationship between the number of immigrants and crime for only one out of the eight crime types analyzed.
Description
item.page.coverage.spatial
item.page.sponsorship
Citation
World Development Volume 126, February 2020, 104728
Keywords
Crime, Inmigration, Spatial econometrics