In Short:

The unequal psychological burden of fear, shaped by an individual’s perception of their risk of victimization, may drive social isolation and the observed negative effects.

Abstract

Does spatial proximity to violence mobilize or depress individuals for political action? While research across the social sciences has illuminated the various forms of social isolation that characterize high-violence American neighborhoods, the democratic consequences of proximate exposure to violence have not been well understood. Merging voter files in U.S. cities and geocoded crime data, I test whether living in close proximity to sites of homicides affects one’s likelihood of voting in federal elections. Employing a regression discontinuity in time (RDiT) design, I provide causal evidence that close residential proximity to homicide depresses turnout by roughly four to six percentage points, with the strongest effects observed in plurality-Black block groups and those involving a Black victim. In further mechanism tests, I analyze 1) foot-traffic data aggregated by census block groups to examine how violence exposure affects population movement and 2) crime-linked survey data. Together, the analyses provide significant evidence that the unequal psychological burden of fear, shaped by an individual’s perception of their risk of victimization, may drive social isolation and the observed negative effects. Generally, I consider how persistently high and spatially concentrated rates of violence in the United States shape patterns of political participation in race-class subjugated communities and affect democratic health more broadly.

About the author

Rebekah Jones

incoming assistant professor, school of government and policy

Rebekah Jones is a political scientist who studies how local political institutions shape the allocation of public goods—and how those distributions, in turn, affect how groups experience and participate in democratic systems.