The effect of neighbourhood and spatial crime rates on mental wellbeing

Abstract

This paper attempts to provide new evidence on the indirect cost of neighbourhood crime rates on mental wellbeing of residents. Crime places a heavy burden on the economy, and it receives significant attention from the public. Yet, the connection between crime and health for victims and non-victims is not well captured in the literature. Using spatial methodology, we differentiate the effect on mental wellbeing of residents due to the crime rates in their immediate neighbourhood (local) and crime rates in the surrounding areas (spatial). The main innovation of the paper is to use these crime rates at small geographical level (around 8500 residents) to better translate the changes in crime in the neighbourhoods and their effects on a person’s mental wellbeing. This is different to other studies that looked at crime incidences in larger geographical units. Our estimation results show that the increase in local and spatial crime rates against the property negatively affect the mental wellbeing of residents. The negative impact of spatial crime rates against the person is also present and is 6.7 times larger than the effect of property crime rates.