Unhappiness and crime: Evidence from South Africa

This paper is the first of its kind to study quality of life responses of crime victims. Using cross-sectional data from the OHS97 survey of South Africa, it is shown that victims report significantly lower well-being than the non-victims, ceteris paribus. Happiness is lower for non-victimized respondents currently living in higher crime areas. However, some evidence is found that criminal victimization hurts, but hurts less if regional crime rate on our reference group is high.