DP9605 Does Violent Crime Deter Physical Activity?

Author(s):	Katharina Janke, Carol Propper, Michael Shields
Publication Date:	September 2013
Keyword(s):	physical activity, riots, violent crime, walking
JEL(s):	I12, I18, R23
Programme Areas:	Public Economics
Link to this Page:	cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=9605

Crime has been argued to have important externalities. We investigate the relationship between violent crime and an important type of behaviour: individuals? participation in their local area through walking and physical activity. We use a sample of nearly 1 million people residing in over 320 small areas in England between 2005 and 2011. We show that concerns about personal safety co-move with police recorded violent crime. To identify the causal effect of recorded violent crime on walking and other physical activity we control for individual-level characteristics, non-time varying local authority effects, national time effects and local authority-specific trends. In addition, we exploit a natural experiment that caused a sudden increase in crime ? the 2011 England riots ? to identify the causal impact of a large exogenous crime shock on physical activity in a triple difference framework. Our results show a substantive deterrent effect of local area violent crime on walking, pointing to important effects of violent crime on non-victims. The adverse effect of an increase in local area violent crime from the 25th to the 75th percentile on walking is equivalent in size to a 6 C fall in average minimum temperature.