Analysis Of Socio-economic Factors Affects Crime Rates

This thesis is based on Becker's subjective expected utility theory. This thesis analyses crimes by economic perspectives and from criminals'viewpoint regarding cost and benefit. Besides, based on crime deterrence theory, this thesis applies crime examples to deliberate on social,economic and political variables'influence on crime rates of grand total crime, larceny and violent crime.Using official statistics of 13 cities in Liaoning province during years of 1985～2008,this thesis analyses data by using OLS and GLS in linear regression model.In order to solve the possible questions of heterogeneity, autocorrelation and contemporaneous correlation, FGLS regression model is applied. Fixed Effects Model is also added to verify the result.The result reveals that:the per capita police expenditure and the unemployment rate have significantly positive influences on the three kinds of crimes. Additionally, the divorce rate has a significantly positive influence on grand total crime and larceny. Meanwhile, the arrestment rate has a significantly negative influence on the three kinds of crimes.The influences of the indictment rate, the Gini coefficient, the density of population and the per capita disposable income on crime rate are different to various crimes.At last, with suggestions based on analysis result from different perspectives toward crime activities, the thesis hopes to provide the government units with referential information on deciding crime prevention strategy.