Does urbanization cause crime? Evidence from rural–urban migration in South Africa

IF 4.8 1区经济学 Q1 ECONOMICS

Journal of Urban Economics Pub Date : 2025-07-01 DOI:10.1016/j.jue.2025.103787

Nelly Exbrayat, Victor Stephane

引用次数: 0

Abstract

We study the impact of urbanization driven by internal migration on crime in South Africa. We create a new dataset that combines yearly data on crime and urban population density at the municipality level from 2011 to 2018. We exploit exogenous variations in rural–urban migration induced by climate shocks at origin for identification. We show that higher urban population density leads to a reduction in pecuniary crime rate but has no effect on non-pecuniary crime rate. This negative effect operates through changes in population composition and a social network effect.

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城市化会导致犯罪吗？来自南非农村向城市迁移的证据

我们研究了由内部移民驱动的城市化对南非犯罪的影响。我们创建了一个新的数据集，该数据集结合了2011年至2018年市级犯罪和城市人口密度的年度数据。我们利用由原产地气候冲击引起的农村-城市移民的外生变化进行鉴定。研究表明，较高的城市人口密度会导致金钱犯罪率的降低，但对非金钱犯罪率没有影响。这种负面影响是通过人口构成的变化和社会网络效应来实现的。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Journal of Urban Economics Multiple-

CiteScore

10.60

自引率

4.80%

发文量

期刊介绍： The Journal of Urban Economics provides a focal point for the publication of research papers in the rapidly expanding field of urban economics. It publishes papers of great scholarly merit on a wide range of topics and employing a wide range of approaches to urban economics. The Journal welcomes papers that are theoretical or empirical, positive or normative. Although the Journal is not intended to be multidisciplinary, papers by noneconomists are welcome if they are of interest to economists. Brief Notes are also published if they lie within the purview of the Journal and if they contain new information, comment on published work, or new theoretical suggestions.