4.6 Article

Neighborhood violence, poverty, and psychological well-being

Journal

JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS
Volume 154, Issue -, Pages -

Publisher

ELSEVIER
DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2021.102756

Keywords

Violence; Psychological well-being; Depression; Mental health; Poverty; Neighborhood effects; South Africa

Categories

Funding

  1. University of Minnesota
  2. Minnesota Population Center National Institutes of Health (NIH) [P2C HD041023]
  3. Graduate School at the University of Minnesota

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The study reveals that impoverished individuals in South Africa tend to reside in neighborhoods with higher levels of violence, which is strongly associated with elevated depressive symptoms and an increased risk of poverty.
We estimate the relationship between neighborhood violence and psychological well-being using nationally representative panel data from South Africa. We use data on household-level perceptions of neighborhood violence as well as reported crimes and local media reports to measure violence. First, we find the poor live in neighborhoods that they perceive to have higher levels of violence and have objectively more violence. Second, higher levels of both perceived and objective violence are strongly linked to elevated depressive symptoms and an increased likelihood of being at risk of depression. Finally, we show that living in urban neighborhoods with high levels of violence while poor is predictive of future poverty in our sample.

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