Property Crime and Inequality: The Case of South Africa Haroon Bhorat, Adaiah Lilenstein, Jabulile Monnakgotla, Amy Thornton, Kirsten van der Zee Abstract It is well established in the literature that property crime rates increase with increasing levels of inequality. However, most research in this area comes from contexts of low-to-moderate crime and inequality rates. This paper explores whether this relationship holds in a context of extreme levels of crime and inequality, using South Africa as a case study. We use cross- sectional precinct-level property crime rates from 2011 combined with census data. We perform non-parametric, semi- parametric, and parametric analyses to uncover the nature of the property crime-inequality relationship and find strong evidence of a positive linear relationship between property crime and an interaction term of income with inequality, but strong evidence of a negative relationship between property crime and inequality on its own. This result is robust to various measures of inequality. One explanation for this finding could be that inequality acts as a signal to relatively richer residents in an area (local elites) that they are more at risk of falling victim to crime. As a consequence of this mechanism, local elites start investing in protective measures which could dampen crime rates.