UC Irvine

This chapter examines how inequality impacts neighborhood crime at various spatial scales. First, I utilize a strictly spatial measure of neighborhoods-egohoods-which relaxes the assumption of non-overlapping boundaries of most existing neighborhood definitions. Existing strategies for constructing neighborhood boundaries typically minimize the amount of inequality present by design, and therefore may underestimate the relationship between inequality and crime in neighborhoods. Second, I assess whether inequality in the broader 2.5-mile area around the ½-mile egohoods further impacts the level of crime. Third, I move beyond cross-sectional analyses and estimate longitudinal models over 10 years. Finally, I extend existing research by selecting four cities that differ in key ways: two Sun Belt cities (Atlanta and Dallas) and two Rust Belt cities (Chicago and Cincinnati). There is strong evidence of the impact of spatial inequality, as greater inequality in a ½-mile egohood is associated with higher robbery rates, and greater inequality in a broader 2.5-mile area around egohoods is related to even higher robbery rates. Nonetheless, spatial inequality may be context specific, as inequality in the larger ¾-mile egohoods better captured crime patterns in Atlanta, a city with lower population density and more similar inequality levels.