TY - JOUR
T1 - Local crime and fertility
AU - Awaworyi Churchill, Sefa
AU - Smyth, Russell
AU - Trinh, Trong-Anh
AU - Yew, Siew Ling
N1 - Funding Information:
This paper uses unit record data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey. The HILDA Project was initiated and is funded by the Australian Government Department of Social Services (DSS) and is managed by the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research (Melbourne Institute). We are also grateful to the state governments and police force of Victoria, Queensland, New South Wales, South Australia, Western Australia and Northern Territory for providing us access with the local area crime data. The findings and views reported in this paper are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the DSS, the Melbourne Institute, the relevant police force or state or territory governments. We thank the anonymous referees for very helpful suggestions on earlier versions of this paper.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Elsevier B.V.
PY - 2022/8
Y1 - 2022/8
N2 - We present the first estimates of the impact of local area crime on fertility. We first develop a simple theoretical model to examine the relationship between crime and fertility. We explore labor income, as a proxy for labor market conditions, house prices and school quality as potential channels. The model predicts that individuals change their demand for children through the income and substitution effects in response to changes in crime rates. We test the theoretical predictions of the model using longitudinal data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey that matches each household to crime statistics, school quality and house prices at the Local Government Area (LGA) level. We find that a one standard deviation increase in the LGA crime rate causes a 7.8 per cent increase in fertility and that house prices and school quality are channels through which crime influences fertility. We find that the mediating effect of school quality is stronger than that of house prices, and that the interaction between school quality and house prices reinforces the role of house prices as a mediator. Further, the positive effect of crime on fertility rates is stronger for homeowners compared to non-homeowners and weaker for those homeowners with a mortgage, relative to those who own their home outright.
AB - We present the first estimates of the impact of local area crime on fertility. We first develop a simple theoretical model to examine the relationship between crime and fertility. We explore labor income, as a proxy for labor market conditions, house prices and school quality as potential channels. The model predicts that individuals change their demand for children through the income and substitution effects in response to changes in crime rates. We test the theoretical predictions of the model using longitudinal data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey that matches each household to crime statistics, school quality and house prices at the Local Government Area (LGA) level. We find that a one standard deviation increase in the LGA crime rate causes a 7.8 per cent increase in fertility and that house prices and school quality are channels through which crime influences fertility. We find that the mediating effect of school quality is stronger than that of house prices, and that the interaction between school quality and house prices reinforces the role of house prices as a mediator. Further, the positive effect of crime on fertility rates is stronger for homeowners compared to non-homeowners and weaker for those homeowners with a mortgage, relative to those who own their home outright.
KW - Australia
KW - Crime
KW - Fertility
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85132736411&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.jebo.2022.06.019
DO - 10.1016/j.jebo.2022.06.019
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85132736411
SN - 0167-2681
VL - 200
SP - 312
EP - 331
JO - Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization
JF - Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization
ER -
