Income inequalities and risk-perception of crime

Résumé 0

The contribution of this paper on risk-perception literature is, first, to focus on the effect of local inequalities in risk-perception. I find that higher inequalities imply an increased subjective risk-perception of physical injuries, burglary and theft. This effect can be explained by the fact that inequalities imply a higher climate of violence; both rich and poor people boost this effect. I use a quadratic term to show that inequalities' effect is not necessarily linear, and has to be cleared of the effect of residential segregation. The second contribution is to add features like density, nightlife intensity, police presence, commune's wealth and victimization rate for each type of crime. Each one of these items can have different effects on perception of risk depending on the type of crime. Last but not least, previous victimization is found to have complex effects on risk-perception, showing that people that have been victimized outside tend to feel safer at home. These results are found using cross-sectional data for Chile in 2011 with more than 22.000 individuals.