When a dollar store opens in a Chicago neighborhood, violent crime nearby goes up, especially robberies. When the store closes, crime falls back to where it was before it opened.
That is the finding of urban researcher Eun Jin Shin, in a paper published online in Urban Affairs Review on January 27, 2024.
Testing the crime magnet reputation
Dollar stores have spread rapidly across the United States as economic inequality has grown, and news coverage has increasingly painted them as magnets for violent crime. Shin notes that little academic research had actually tested that claim.
The study used a difference-in-differences design. It compared how violent crime changed in areas near new dollar stores with how it changed over the same period in control areas.
Robberies rise, then fall after closing
After a dollar store opened, violent crime in the surrounding area rose significantly relative to the control areas, with robberies standing out. There was no sign that the crime had simply moved from elsewhere in the neighborhood, a pattern researchers call spatial displacement.
The closings were just as telling. After dollar stores shut, violent crime nearby returned to its level from before the store opened, and this held for every type of crime studied.
Shin also tracked how the effect of an opening changed over time, and how it differed depending on what surrounded each store. The rise and fall with each store’s lifespan is what makes the link hard to dismiss as a coincidence of location.
Study Details:
- Title: Are Dollar Stores Magnets for Violent Crime? Evidence from Chicago
- Authors: Eun Jin Shin
- Journal: Urban Affairs Review
- Publication Date: January 27, 2024
- DOI: 10.1177/10780874241226875