Relationship Between Crime Level, Unemployment, Poverty, Corruption And Inflation In Nigeria (An Empirical Ananlysis)

¹Aminu Umaru, ²Manu Donga,  ³El-Maude Jibreel Gambo and ⁴kabiru Musa Yakubu

^1,2Lecturers, Department Of Economics, School Of Management and Information Technology, Modibbo Adama University of Technology, Yola,Adamawa State,  Nigeria.

³Lecturer Department Of Accountancy, School Of Management and Information Technology, Modibbo Adama University of Technology, Yola,Adamawa State,  Nigeria.

⁴Department Of Management Technology School Of Management and Information Technology, Modibbo Adama University of Technology, Yola,Adamawa State,  Nigeria.

Corresponding Author Email: aminu_umaru2007@yahoo.com

Accepted 06 August 2013

Abstract

It is an obvious fact that the rate of unemployment, poverty, corruption and inflation in Nigeria is alarming despite government efforts to reduce them. This paper investigates the relationship between crime level, unemployment rate, poverty rate, and corruption level and inflation rate in Nigeria between 1980 and 2009. The properties of time series variables were examined through the application of Augmented Dickey-Fuller technique in testing the unit root property of the series and Granger causality test of causation between the variables. The results of the OLS revealed that unemployment, poverty and corruption impacted negatively on crime level, while inflation rate impacted positively on crime level in the Nigeria. The results of unit root suggest that all the variables in the model are stationary. Inflation is stationary at level but at 10 per cent while crime level, unemployment, poverty, and corruption are stationary at first difference. The results of Causality suggested no causation between unemployment and crime level, one-way causation between poverty and crime level, two-way causation between corruption and crime level, and two-way causation between corruption and inflation, one-way causation also existed between corruption and unemployment. The result further indicates no causation between poverty and unemployment, inflation and unemployment, corruption and poverty, as well as between inflation and poverty. This paper found that, there is a link between crime level, unemployment, poverty, corruption and inflation; but even if people were unemployed, poor and corrupt, criminality may not be that high, but when the cost of living which is determined by inflation is high, crime level become high. Therefore, this paper recommends that concerted effort be made by policy makers to reduce crime level in the country by formulating a robust monetary and fiscal policies aiming at ensuring price stability. Policy makers should also take step to reducing unemployment, poverty, and corruption because they may be inimical to economic growth.

Keywords: Crime, Unemployment, Poverty, Corruption, Inflation and Causality.