Is there a correlation between social benefits and property crime?

Abstract: According to economic theory, an increase in income inequality leads to an increase in property crime rates. The social benefits funded trough taxation is one of the means for the state to regulate income inequality. While income inequality and crime is a carefully investigated topic, social benefits and crime are not. This paper investigates what effect public social benefits have on the different types of property crimes. An empirical study is performed, which collected data from 21 OECD countries over 11 years. Two sets of regressions are conducted, one which included all 21 countries and oneconsisting of six countries from northern Europe. We found that the property crime rates correlate positively with Total, Unemployment, Family, and Incapacity social expenditure. Similarly, there is anegative correlation between property crime rates and Housing and Health social expenditure. When the targeted sample of northern Europe was examined, it is clear that the results follow the same trendas the OECD sample, except with a weaker significance level.