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Crime and Happiness Amongst Heads of Households in Malawi

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Abstract

This paper uses 2005 Malawian data to investigate the link between crime and happiness in Malawi. Detailed descriptive statistics reveal that crime is a gendered issue and econometric analyses show that males and females respond differently to different crime variables. In particular, for males being attacked has a negative impact on happiness and neighbourhood crime rates have a U-shaped effect on happiness with happiness at its lowest when 11.2% of respondents in a neighbourhood reported being a victim. For females only a subjective feeling of insecurity impacts negatively on happiness.

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Notes

  1. At the time of the survey, US$1≈MK130.

  2. We would like to thank an anonymous referee for pointing this out.

  3. For a discussion of the endogeneity issues see Diener and Seligman (2004), Diener et al. (2002), and Frey and Stutzer (2002).

  4. We would like to thank an anonymous referee for suggesting this type of analysis.

  5. The highly educated worker could well be the principle earner in the household but has to sacrifice more of this income to other household members that could negatively affect happiness.

  6. In Malawi, self-employed females tend to run small home-based businesses such as beer brewing, with many males running larger trading firms.

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Correspondence to Tim Hinks.

Appendices

Appendix I

See Table 6.

Table 6 Variable definitions

Appendix II

See Table 7.

Table 7 Descriptive statistics

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Davies, S., Hinks, T. Crime and Happiness Amongst Heads of Households in Malawi. J Happiness Stud 11, 457–476 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-009-9152-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-009-9152-7

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