Effects of unemployment on crime rates : In the case study of Malaysia vs United States / Muhammad Ammar Syakirin Zulkarnain

The economic crisis faced by countries around the world in recent years has led to the increasing rate of unemployment. At the same time, it is considered not only as an economic crisis but also as a major social crisis. Crime rates tend to increase with the increasing rates of unemployment. The purpose of this research is to study the correlation between unemployment and crime rates. The crime rates have been chosen as the dependent variables. The crime is divided into two types which is property crime and violent crime. Property crime are as follows which is burglary, larceny and motor vehicles. While, crime rate examples are murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault. In order to observe the variables that give significant effects on the dependent variables, the researcher compared two type of country which is Malaysia the example of developing country and United States the example of developed country by using the multiple regression model from E-Views. Meanwhile, the independent variables are unemployment, inflation, GDP per Capita, poverty and population. The data was collected from year 1987 to 2016 (n=30). Result of this study shows that unemployment gives significant effect on crime towards Malaysia only. Meanwhile, for United States the unemployment variable shows no significant effects at all on crime rates. Plus, the different is unemployment gives positive relationship on the developing country. While negative relationship on the developed country.