城乡收入差距、民工失业与中国犯罪率的上升

Can We Attribute Increasing Criminal Rate to Enlarging Urban-rural Inequality in China?

本文利用1988—2008年省级面板数据研究后发现:首先,没有明显的证据表明省内城乡收入差距的扩大必然增加各省的犯罪率。其次,中国犯罪率的上升和"第五次犯罪高峰"的产生与城市登记失业率有关:一方面,它意味着民工失业率也可能在上升,城市居民和民工失业的增加都会直接推动犯罪率上升,而由于失业的民工缺乏最低生活保障和社会保险,他们会更加脆弱并更容易走向犯罪,因此会更容易推动犯罪率的上升;另一方面,城市失业率的上升还会推动地方政府采取更加歧视民工的就业政策来保护城市居民的就业,因而在犯罪率上升和犯罪高峰持续的过程中起到了推波助澜的作用。本文的解释对于理解中国经济社会的发展及制定降低犯罪率的公共政策提供了重要启示。

Present studies generally attribute increasing criminal rate in China to enlarging urban-rural inequality and increasing rural-urban migrant workers. Using a provincial panel data in China and instrument technologies, this paper, however, finds that there are no robust evidences supporting such points; secondly, we find strong evidences showing that the increasing criminal rate is maifily caused by increasing unemployment in urban labor market and the discrimination policies adopted by local urban governments, which substitutes the urban unemployment with migrants unemployment. Those jobless migrant workers are more vulnerable to crime than those jobless urban citizens for that the formers are not included in the social protection system specially provided for urban citizens.