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The Impact of Economic Cycle, Poverty, Climate Change and Law
Enforcement on Crime in United States of America
Nur Fadhilah Binti Zainal
Supervisor: Dr. Jaharudin Bin Padli
Bachelor of Economics (Natural Resources)
School of Social and Economic Development
Crime is one of the major problems faced by most of the developed countries such as
the United States. However, crime in US has declined over the last two decades, but
violent crime has increased from 2015 to 2016. The purpose of this study is to examine
between economic cycle, poverty, climate change and law enforcement on crime in
50 states in US employing the panel data analysis from 1997 to 2016. Fixed and
Random Effect models are estimated to analyze the impact of economic cycle, poverty,
climate change and law enforcement on crime for all various types of crime categories
(violent crime and property crime). The result indicates that economic cycle and
poverty were negatively related on crime. While for law enforcement, it is significantly
positive relationship on crime and according to Sherman and Eck (2002), crime
increases during the 'police strike' and weak law enforcement in US. For climate
change, this study did not find any evidence that climate change could reduce or
increase criminal activity. Therefore, to reduce criminal activities in US, government
policies and law enforcement need to be implement more effectively to curb these
problem.
1419 | UMT UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH DAY 2018