| Summary: | Crime in the Philippines has always been a serious issue with one of the highest murder rates in Southeast Asia. Previous studies on the topic note that potential offenders face costs and benefits when deciding to commit a crime. They must risk costs such as severity and probability of punishment and foregone legal income opportunities to earn benefits such as higher illegal income opportunities lead. In a macro perspective, higher costs would lead to less overall crime while higher benefits would lead to more. This study analyzes how deterrence, legal income opportunities, illegal income opportunities, education, inequality, poverty, demographic variables, urbanization, and internal migration affect crime in the Philippines at a regional level. Empirically, the paper uses a pooled OLS and panel data regression using region and time fixed effects to determine the factors that affect crime rates. Our analysis shows that the main determinants of crime appear are deterrence, internal migration from provinces, and high school education where the three variables are related to less crime while other economic and sociodemographic variables have less consistent significant effects on the various types of crimes.
|
|---|