Urban-rural income gap and urban crime rate

Abstract

This article takes various prefecture-level cities in China as the research subject and empirically tests the relationship between the urban-rural income gap and the urban crime rate in Chinese urban areas. The research results show that the greater the urban-rural income gap, the more likely it is to lead to an increase in the urban crime rate. Further heterogeneity analysis results show that the impact of the urban-rural income gap on the urban crime rate is more evident in areas with low levels of marketization and low levels of government special transfer payments.