Crime, health and wellbeing – Longitudinal evidence from Mexico

Braakmann, Nils (2013): Crime, health and wellbeing – Longitudinal evidence from Mexico.

Abstract

This paper uses variation in victimization probabilities between individuals living in the same community to shed new light on the costs of crime. I use panel data from the Mexican Family Life Survey for 2002 and 2005 and look at the impact of within-community differences in victimization risk on changes in self-rated and mental health. My results from fixed effects and instrumental variable estimations point towards substantial negative health effects of actual victimization, which might help to explain the existence of compensating differentials in wages or house prices found in earlier studies.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: cost of crime; victimization; health
• Subjects: H - Public Economics > H4 - Publicly Provided Goods > H40 - General; I - Health, Education, and Welfare > I1 - Health > I10 - General; I - Health, Education, and Welfare > I1 - Health > I12 - Health Behavior; K - Law and Economics > K0 - General > K00 - General; K - Law and Economics > K4 - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior > K42 - Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law; R - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics > R2 - Household Analysis > R23 - Regional Migration ; Regional Labor Markets ; Population ; Neighborhood Characteristics

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