Inequality, Unemployment and Crime: A Cross-National Analysis

Abstract

In order to contribute to the development of an international perspective on crime and to examine a central tenet similar to many theoretical perspectives on the etiology of crime, cross-national data on inequality, unemployment, and crime rates were analyzed. It was hypothesized that nations having a high rate of unemployment and an inequitable distribution of income would have a high crime rate. The results of the correlational analyses indicate a moderate positive relationship between the rate of unemployment and homicide rates, whereas there are small negative relationships between unemployment rates and (1) the rates of property crime, and (2) the total crime rates. The variable of inequality is strongly related to the three indices of crime and the directions of the relationships are consistent with those involving unemployment rates. The results were further investigated to examine the possibility that the observed relationships were due to the effects of industrialization. The direction of the zero-order correlations involving property crime rates and total crime rates are not changed in the partial correlations and the strength of the relationships are not consistently reduced. These results are discussed in reference to their implications for criminological theory and the development of a comparative criminology.