Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/196726 
Year of Publication: 
2019
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 12228
Publisher: 
Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
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 of migrants 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 one standard deviation increase in social connectedness reducing murders by 21 percent and motor vehicle thefts by 20 percent. Social connectedness especially reduces murders of adolescents and young adults committed during gang and drug activity.
Subjects: 
crime
social connectedness
Great Migration
JEL: 
K42
N32
R23
Z13
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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