Income Distribution, Unemployment and Crime Relationship: Turkey Case

32nd EBES Conference, İstanbul, Türkiye, 5 - 07 Ağustos 2020, ss.344-355

The increase in crime rates in developed and developing countries causes attention to be turned into this field. Whether the notion of crime is related to economic variables has been discussed for many years. Economic structure, poverty, unemployment, wage, inequality in income distribution and education level are among the determinant factors of crime. The notion of crime, explained by socio-economic and cultural factors, is one of the most important problems in social, economic and political terms and it has the effect of disrupting social ties and order. Distorted income distribution of a country leads to an increase in unemployment and has a detrimental effect on social and social order. The effect of changes in economic indicators and unemployment on the crime rate in the society is the subject of the study. In this study for the period 1990-2019, the relationship between income distribution, unemployment and crime analyzed with Bayer-Hanck (2012) cointegration and Hacker-Hatemi (2006) causality analysis tests are examined for Turkey. As a result of the analysis findings, it was found that there is a one-way causality relationship from income distribution to crime rates, and from crime rates to the unemployment variable. It was also found that there is a bidirectional causality relationship between income distribution and unemployment.