The View: Economic progress may not be to blame for Macau’s rising crime

Macau’s crime rate is rising: a 7.2 percent increase from 2010 to 2011. Macau’s Judiciary Police (PJ) Director, Wong Sio Chak, in his annual media meeting, was quoted as saying that ‘economic development causes an increase in crimes related to gaming’ (‘Economic progress to blame for more crimes’, Macau Daily Times, 13 January, 2012, p. 3). This is a very dangerous statement, and the evidence quoted did not support it. To state that there is a causal rather than a correlation relation, or indeed any relation, requires a level of proof that was simply not present.
As elementary social science tells us, correlation and cause are entirely different matters. Even if we were somehow to believe, however fallaciously, that correlation might indicate cause, using the Macau government’s own quarterly data from the start of 2009 up to the final quarter of 2011 refutes any serious relationship between crime and economic development. Calculating correlation between the number of crimes and GDP (a widely used indicator of economic growth) yields only a tiny, statistically insignificant association between the two. The same is true for correlations between the number of crimes and other indicators of economic growth: (a) the number of employed; (b) population size; (c) the composite consumer price index; and (d) median monthly earnings.
Even when one controls statistically for (a) to (d), the relationship between crime and GDP is insignificant. In fact, in a whimsical moment, I calculated that, from January 2009 to September 2011, the strength of the correlation between the number of crimes and (i) the weather – as indicated by the mean temperature – and (ii) the number of marriages was stronger than that between crime and GDP.

‘It is very questionable whether economic development should be to blame for crime, gaming-related or otherwise.  It is people who commit crimes, not some general factor such as ‘economic development’

Put simply, using the government’s own data, it is unproven whether Macau’s economic development actually causes the rise in crime; it may do, but where is the causal evidence? On what evidence will we know with any certainty that it is economic development which is actually causing rising crime rather than simply being the context in which crime takes place? It may be that Macau’s economic development is actually reducing crime and that other factors are causing rising crime, or that it is China’s rather than Macau’s economic development that is causing the rise. In fact, for factors (a) to (d) above, using multiple regression analysis, the only statistically significant relationship was between crime and unemployment. And let’s face it, even though there was a reported rise of 87.1 percent of thefts inside casinos, this only produced 174 such cases in a year; hardly earth-shattering when one considers the millions of punters.

Maybe more tourists come simply to commit crimes. Or maybe it’s simply a matter of population density, and nothing to do with economic development (and Macau’s economic development hasn’t really touched many of the local population, see the low median monthly earnings).  Indeed when one correlates GDP with the number of crimes from January 2009 to September 2011, after controlling for the number of the local population, one finds a negative relationship, i.e. the larger the population, the lower the proportion of crimes; in other words the per capita crime rate is reducing. Macau’s crime rate (the number of reported crimes divided by the number of people in Macau, including visitors, and then percentaged) has dropped from .05 percent in the first quarter of 2009 to .04 percent in the third quarter of 2011.
And what exactly do we mean by ‘economic development’? It is such a general, loose term as to be almost meaningless. It is as unhelpful as saying that land reclamation, or infrastructure development, or construction work, or money, causes crimes. It is vacuous.
Further, it is very questionable whether economic development should be to blame for crime, gaming-related or otherwise.  It is people who commit crimes, not some general factor such as ‘economic development’. The PJ Director’s assertion is an example of the error of what the eminent sociologist John Goldthorpe terms ‘variable sociology’, i.e. it is mistaken to believe that it is variables rather than individuals which are doing the causing, or that individuals are only the context in which the variables do their work. People, not economic development, commit crimes.
So, we have no persuasive evidence of correlation or causality in the PJ Director’s comments, and, anyway, his terminology is empty of real meaning.  All-too-easy statements of causality are dangerous. It’s disturbing to see reason so easily travestied.

Keith Morrison works at Macau University of Science and Technology

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