Crime and Income Inequality: An Economic Approach JOSEPH DEUTSCH, URIEL SPIEGEL, AND JOSEPH TEMPLEMAN* I. Introduction The criminology and sociology literature are rich with scholarly attempts to identify the variables affecting criminal activity, giving particular emphasis to crimes against property. Naturally, special attention has been devoted to the influence of inequality in the distribution of income, since its importance is so intuitively appealing. An excellent study of this type is that of Carroll and Jackson [1983], who used a sample from 93 non-southern cities with a population of over 50,000. Their regression results demonstrated [p. 186] "that inequality has strong causal effects on crime rates." In their introductory survey of the literature, Caroll and Jackson [p. 179] also point out that "recent research tends to the conclusion that it is inequality rather than poverty that is the crucial variable." As they correctly point out, this argument was very strongly made by Braithwaite [1979, p. 211], who after an exhaustive review of the literature concluded that while the evidence regarding the effect of poverty on crime rate is inconsistent, "the literature shows fairly uniform support for a positive association between inequality and crime .... " This relationship, first noted by Eberts and Schwirian [1968], is generally accepted today. Surprisingly, this positive association seems to hold true only for the U.S. In a cross-national study of 62 countries, Stack [1984, p. 247] concludes that, "the best estimates in the analysis offer no support for the hypotheses on property crime and inequality. The results of research based predominantly on American samples are not replicated for a large set of nations with varied cultural and institutional frameworks." The most significant variable affecting crime rates according to Stack was the total level of wealth of the society or what he termed the degree of economic development [p. 246]. "Again, however, a control variable does most of the explaining of the variance in crime: the level of economic development." The importance of the total level of wealth in explaining property crime within the U.S. itself is also pointed out by Jacobs [1981]. He finds [p. 23] that, "if we look at the effects of particular variables we find that the indicator with the most consistent effects was the measure of economic development." And he shows once again that (in contrast to cross-national data) for the U.S.: *Bar-Ilan University- Israel. 46