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Impact of drought on crime in California: A synthetic control approach

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  • Dana E Goin
  • Kara E Rudolph
  • Jennifer Ahern

Abstract

Climate and weather have been linked to criminal activity. The connection between climatological conditions and crime is of growing importance as we seek to understand the societal implications of climate change. This study describes the mechanisms theorized to link annual variations in climate to crime in California and examines the effect of drought on statewide crime rates from 2011–2015. California has suffered severe drought since 2011, resulting in intensely dry winters and several of the hottest days on record. It is likely that the drought increased economic stress and shifted routine activities of the population, potentially increasing the likelihood of crime. We used a synthetic control method to estimate the impact of California’s drought on both property and violent crimes. We found a significant increase in property crimes during the drought, but no effect on violent crimes. This result was robust to several sensitivity analyses, including a negative control.

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  • Dana E Goin & Kara E Rudolph & Jennifer Ahern, 2017. "Impact of drought on crime in California: A synthetic control approach," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(10), pages 1-15, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0185629
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0185629
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Daniel Albalate & Germà Bel & Ferran A. Mazaira-Font, 2020. "Ensuring Stability, Accuracy and Meaningfulness in Synthetic Control Methods: The Regularized SHAP-Distance Method," IREA Working Papers 202005, University of Barcelona, Research Institute of Applied Economics, revised Apr 2020.
    2. Hart, Rannveig & Pedersen, Willy & Skardhamar, Torbjørn, 2019. "Blowing in the wind? The effect of weather on the intensity and spatial distribution of crime," SocArXiv qrhn4, Center for Open Science.
    3. Kerianne Lawson, 2023. "Using property rights to fight crime: the Khaya Lam project," Journal of Economics and Finance, Springer;Academy of Economics and Finance, vol. 47(2), pages 269-302, June.
    4. Lohmann, Paul M. & Gsottbauer, Elisabeth & You, Jing & Kontoleon, Andreas, 2023. "Air pollution and anti-social behaviour: Evidence from a randomised lab-in-the-field experiment," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 320(C).

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