Does Increased Access to Home Mortgage Money Decrease Local Crime Rates? Evidence from San Diego County

Abstract

This study provides estimates of the impact of increased access to home mortgage credit on local crime rates and uses national home mortgage loan origination volume as a shift-share instrument for local home mortgage loan origination volume. The focus of the study is San Diego County from 2007-Q1 to 2013-Q1. The regression estimates indicate that increased access to home mortgage loans during this time period had a statistically significant negative impact on local crime rates: the baseline specification suggests that a ten percentage point increase in the growth in home mortgage loan originations decreases the growth in total crime incidents by approximately 2.75 percentage points. This finding is robust to different model specifications.