A panel data analysis of crime in South Africa

Abstract

This study analyses the determinants of crime in South Africa using economic, social and demographic variables. The model is estimated using an unbalanced panel of 1044 observations for 15 crimes across the 9 provinces of South Africa over 8 years. A comprehensive analysis of the crime situation is achieved using this data, since it combines the benefits of macroeconomic time series with microeconomic cross sectional series. The statistical results identify significant effects for the income per capita, drug use, ratio of woman to men, the economically active population, degree of urbanisation, unemployment rate and age structure variables. Only one third of all crimes are sensitive to changes in quantity of expenditure on total protection services. Education and change in gross domestic product variables yielded insignificant results.