Moral Values, Social Trust and Inequality: Can Values Explain Crime?

Abstract

Cross-national social attitude data from the World Values Surveys (1981-1983, 1990) were analysed to explore whether values can explain' crime. Mirroring patterns of offending and in contrast to other values, tolerance for a sub-group of materially self-interested attitudes were found to be significantly higher in men, younger people, larger cities, and had increased over time. These self-interested values were also found to be associated with victimization rates at the national level as measured by the International Crime Victimisation Surveys. Multivariate models incorporating self-interested values, economic inequality, social trust and the interaction between these variables explained two-thirds of variance in victimization at the national level. Implications and contrast with the previous literature are discussed.