Unhappiness and Crime: Evidence from South Africa

This paper is the first of its kind to study quality of life responses of crime victims. Using cross‐sectional data from the OHS97 survey of South Africa, it is shown that victims report significantly lower well‐being than the non‐victims, ceteris paribus . Happiness is lower for non‐victimized respondents currently living in higher crime areas. However, some evidence is found that criminal victimization hurts, but hurts less if regional crime rate on our reference group is high.