Is an ageing population the cause of lower crime?

January 21, 2012 1:46 PM

Is there any research exploring a potential link between an ageing population and falling crime rates?

It seems to me that the most obvious explanation for reducing crime in a number of developed countries over the last 20-30 years is the increasing average age of those countries. After all, older people are less likely both to commit and experience crime. Cursory searching about this does not bring up any analyses aimed at supporting or refuting my idea. Does anyone know of anything?

posted by howfar to Society & Culture (3 answers total)

Best answer: Yes, this has been studied by economists, though I'm only personally aware of research on the US. See http://neuro.bcm.edu/eagleman/neurolaw/papers/[Levitt]2004.pdf for an interesting discussion on what factors likely did and did not cause the 1990's drop in crime in the US. His conclusion on an aging population:

"...overall changes in the age distribution may have reduced homicide and violent crime by a few percent and property crime by as much as 5-6 percent. Changes in racial composition largely offset the age-distribution benefits for homicide and reduce the estimate somewhat for violent crime, but the property crime benefit largely remains. Thus, demographic shifts may account for a little more than one-sixth of the observed decline in property crime in the 1990s, but are not an important factor in the drop in violent crime."

The aging of the population may be more profound in Europe and so may have a larger effect. Data on crime is most reliable for the US, but I'm sure someone has looked at this. I would start with papers cited by and citing the Levitt paper quoted above.
posted by deadweightloss at 1:59 PM on January 21, 2012 [1 favorite]

In Freakonomics they point to Rowe v. Wade as a factor in crime dropping, but I'm not sure how that correlates to other countries.
posted by backwards guitar at 2:17 PM on January 21, 2012 [1 favorite]

For a quick review, see section on "Differences Across Age Groups" starting on p.21 here.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 7:52 PM on January 21, 2012