Labor Market Condition and Crime: Evidence from Zhejiang Panel

摘要

Surging crime rates has long been recognized as an important social economic issue in transitional China. Following the framework pioneered by Ehrlich (1973)'41, we employed a panel dataset from Zhejiang province to investigate the empirical relationship between labor market condition and crime. We found that increasing average wage in urban sector will discourage crime participation, while widening income inequality between rural and urban area significantly leads to more crimes. Our estimate remains robust for various model specifications and taking controls for both year and county fixed effects, which provides some hints for further public policies regarding coordinating the development of both rural and urban areas.