Poverty and Crime: Impact of socioeconomic factors on crime in India

Abstract

Economic analysis of crime and criminal law addresses the question of individual welfare (utility) maximization through optimal allocation of resources and time in accordance to their relative returns. India is chosen as the case study because it has to carefully channel its funds and resources towards economic growth, poverty alleviation and crime deterrence concomitantly. The results indicate a positive and statistically significant impact of poverty, inequitable income growth and low quality of the legal system on incidence of total property-related crimes. Moreover, the elasticity figures suggest that poverty has the highest impact on robberies. Most convincing result comes from the figures of elasticity of education with crime.