TY - JOUR
T1 - The effect of social connectedness on crime
T2 - Evidence from the great migration
AU - Stuart, Bryan A.
AU - Taylor, Evan J.
N1 - Funding Information:
Thanks to Martha Bailey, Dan Black, John Bound, Charlie Brown, Eric Chyn, John DiNardo, Steven Durlauf, Alan Griffith, James Heckman, Mike Mueller-Smith, Daniel Nagin, Seth Sanders, Jeff Smith, Lowell Taylor, Anthony Yezer, anonymous referees, and numerous seminar and conference participants for helpful comments. Thanks to Seth Sanders and Jim Vaupel for facilitating access to the Duke SSA/Medicare data. During work on this project, B.A.S. was supported in part by an NICHD training grant (T32 HD007339) and an NICHD center grant (R24 HD041028) to the Population Studies Center at the University of Michigan. E.J.T. thanks the Center for the Economics of Human Development at the University of Chicago.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
PY - 2021/3
Y1 - 2021/3
N2 - This paper estimates the effect of social connectedness on crime across U.S. cities from 1970 to 2009. Migration networks among African Americans from the South generated variation across destinations in the concentration ofmigrants from the same birth town. Using this novel source of variation, we find that social connectedness considerably reduces murders, rapes, robberies, assaults, burglaries, and motor vehicle thefts, with a 1 standard deviation increase in social connectedness reducing murders by 21% and motor vehicle thefts by 20%. Social connectedness especially reduces murders of adolescents and young adults committed during gang and drug activity.
AB - This paper estimates the effect of social connectedness on crime across U.S. cities from 1970 to 2009. Migration networks among African Americans from the South generated variation across destinations in the concentration ofmigrants from the same birth town. Using this novel source of variation, we find that social connectedness considerably reduces murders, rapes, robberies, assaults, burglaries, and motor vehicle thefts, with a 1 standard deviation increase in social connectedness reducing murders by 21% and motor vehicle thefts by 20%. Social connectedness especially reduces murders of adolescents and young adults committed during gang and drug activity.
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U2 - 10.1162/rest_a_00860
DO - 10.1162/rest_a_00860
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85102009219
SN - 0034-6535
VL - 103
SP - 18
EP - 33
JO - Review of Economics and Statistics
JF - Review of Economics and Statistics
IS - 1
ER -