Determinants of Crime in Nigeria from Economic and Socioeconomic Perspectives: A Macro-Level Analysis

The study examined the determinants of crimes in Nigeria from economic and socioeconomic perspectives: A macro-level analysis using a time series data covering the period of 1990 to 2014. Both economic and socio-economic factors that determinant crime were included in the model. The economic factors include GDP per capita; male unemployment rate; female unemployment rate and poverty rate while the socioeconomic-demographic factors include higher education enrolment; urban population and rural population. The study embraces the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model to empirically analyze the model since the variables were stationary at levels I(0) and first difference I(1). The empirical results in the long-run indicated that gross domestic product per capita and female unemployment rate was found to have a negative significant effect on crime rate in Nigeria while urban and rural population, male and female unemployment rate were found to have a positive significant effect on crime rate in Nigeria. Also, the results of the short-run indicated that gross domestic product per capita and higher education was found to have a negative significant effect on crime rate in Nigeria while urban population, male unemployment rate and poverty rate were found to have a positive significant effect on crime rate in Nigeria in the short-run. Therefore, for a country like Nigeria to reduce criminal activities in the country, there must be an increase in the income of the people. Also, government should invest more in education because it makes the people more rational and more risk averse and so it reduces the propensity to commit crimes. Therefore, higher education attainment will be the cure for criminal activities in Nigeria. Government should also create more jobs because high unemployment rates will compel people to commit crimes and this will increase crime rate in Nigeria. Lastly, there should be high budgetary provision towards poverty alleviation programme because higher poverty may lead to higher crimes rate due to depression or mental illness associated with being poor and this will decreases the rate of return of legal activities and more likely to increase return of illegal activities.