Property Crime as A Redistributive Tool: The Case of Argentina

In this study, we use two new data sets on crime and victimisation in Argentina. The first of these is province-level official data over the period 1992-2002. The second data set is the crime victimization survey for the city of Buenos Aires and its main surburbs, which has been conducted annually since 1996. Our main results are as follows. First, we show that the worsening of income inequality or alternatively relative poverty has significantly increased property crime in Argentina during the 1990s. Our estimates suggest that income inequality, as measured by the Gini index, explained between 10 and 25 % of the increase in property crime during the 1992-2002 period. Second, we find that property crime has become increasingly concentrated on the middle and upper class over the period 1996-2001. Overall, these results suggest that property crime has been used as a redistributive tool to compensate for the impoverishment of the poorest during the last decade and in particular the ultimate crisis in Argentina