Impact of unemployment on crime in the Philippines
Date
2016-12
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Abstract
Unemployment and crime remains a problem despite the Philippine economy’s growth in recent
years. This study aims to examine the relationship of unemployment on crime in the Philippines.
We look into the relationship of unemployment on the different classifications of crime in a
period of 5 years using regional data. We used the fixed effects model for panel data analysis.
We controlled for the possible effect of GDP per capita, population density, crime clearance
efficiency and ratio of college undergraduates and graduates over the labor force. We also
included female unemployment rates and male unemployment rates to look into the gender-
specific component effects of unemployment on crime. Our estimates show strong evidence that
unemployment has a positive and significant effect on total crime. Our results also reveal that
unemployment has greater effects on non-index crimes. GDP per capita and population density
are also positively correlated with crime. Crime clearance efficiency was negatively correlated
with crime although it was not statistically significant. Education, however, appeared to be
positively correlated with crime, which is opposite of our predictions. As for gender-specific
unemployment, our results show that male unemployment has a greater impact on crime than
female unemployment.
Description
Keywords
Unemployment, crime