Human Development is a paradigm concerning development that goes beyond the fluctuations of national incomes. It involves the creation of an atmosphere where citizens can live creatively and productively, attaining their full potential that corresponds to their interests and needs. The real wealth of a nation is her people. Development is therefore about increasing the options the people have to engage their living in ways they see fit. Economic growth only can therefore not make up human development, but only a means of it.
Crucial to widening these options is developing the people’s potential, the activities they can engage in to be better in life. An essential human development capability is living a long and healthy life, have the knowledge, and access resources necessary for a standard of living that is considered decent, and have the ability to take part in the social aspect of the community. If there is a lack of any of these capabilities, the options in life are not as sufficient and accessing many opportunities in life is not possible.
The wellbeing has been reiterated by political leaders, economists, and philosophers as the goal and end of human development. There are no precise measurements of human development but rather the indicators of human wellbeing are used to show aspects of human development. These parameters include birth and mortality rates, enrollment and completion of school, poverty rates, crime rates, incomes, Gross Domestic Product among others. For the purpose of this work, the parameters education, poverty, and crimes are selected to explain aspects of human development.
A number of recent statistics indicate that there is a link that is strong between education and crime. Education has a role in the investment of human capital that increases the chances of taking part in legitimate work in future and, in turn, reduces the need to participate in criminal activities. If human capital increases the marginal gains to supersede crime, then schooling and human capital should cause a reduction in crime. Therefore, policies that increase the rate of enrollment into schools or the quality and efficiency of it is bound to reduce most type of street crime that includes property crime. However, white collar crimes show the converse relationship where they increase with an increase in education. Education may also instill the virtue of patience hence discouraging one from engaging in crime2.
There is a relationship between education and poverty that is significant. Education offers exposure to economic advantages all across the world, and it is therefore highly likely that attaining some level of education is bound to increase the likelihood of getting out of poverty or escaping it entirely.
The specific variables selected for this work are percentage population with less than high school education, the percentage of the population that have at least a bachelor’s degree, poverty rate and the rate of property crime to study the aspect of Human development. This is because it is believed that education is a significant factor for human development. As seen above, it is taken that people getting a higher education will have a lower rate of poverty. If people are living in poverty, they may have a great possibility engage in property crimes.
- Percentage of population with at least a high school diploma: This is the percentage of the population for a given state, for the number of people that have completed high school education at the minimum. (Includes all those who have at least a bachelor’s degree).
- Percentage of population with at least a bachelor’s degree: This is the percentage of the population for a given state, for the number of people that have completed a bachelor’s education at the minimum. (Includes some of those that have at least a high school diploma).
- The rate of property crime: This is the number of property crimes reported for every 100, 000 people in the given state. Property crime includes crimes like larceny, burglary, theft, arson, motor vehicle theft, vandalism, shoplifting among others.
- Poverty rate: This is the percentage of the population in a given state that is living below the federal poverty threshold.
Univariate Analysis
Percentage of Population with at Least a High School Diploma
Table 1: Summary statistics on the percentage population with at least a high school diploma in the USA
On average, 87.12% of people in the USA have at least a high school diploma. The state with the least number of people having at least a high school diploma has 80.7% while the one with the highest has 92.3%. These values are about two standard deviations from the mean. The range is only 11.6% indicating that the rate of high school completion is about even through all the states.
Figure 1: Boxplots for the percentage population with at least a high school diploma in the USA
From the box plots in Figure 1 above, the distribution indicates that the completion rate for high school in the United States is above 80%.
Percentage of Population with at Least a Bachelor’s Degree
On average, 27.93% of people in the USA have at least a bachelor’s degree. The state with the least number of individuals having at least a bachelor’s degree has 17.5% while the one with the highest has 50.1%. The range is 32.6%, indicating that the number of people with at least a bachelor’s degree across the states has some significantly large difference. This may be explained by the fact that after completing their bachelor’s degree, people tend to move to states and cities that are considered urbaner where white collar opportunities are in plenty.
Table 2: Summary statistics on the percentage population with at least a bachelor’s degree in the USA
Property Crime
From Table 3 below, on average, there are 2854 reported cases of property crimes across the States of America. The state with the highest property crime rate being 4861 reported cases while the state with the lowest rate being 1922 reported cases for every 100,000 people. This makes for a range of 2939 reported property crimes for every 100, 000 people.
Table 3: The number of property crimes in every 100,000 citizens in the states of America.
Figure 3: A box plot of the number of reported property crime for every 100, 000 population across the states of America.
The plot on Figure 3 above indicates that most states have the property crime rate clustered around 3000 reported cases for every 100, 000 of the population. However, there seems to be an outlier on the higher side, which is District of Columbia.
Poverty Rate (% below federal poverty threshold)
Table 3: Summary for the percentage of people living below the federal poverty threshold in the USA.
From Table 4 above, on average, 14.77% of people in the USA live below the federal poverty line. The state with the highest poverty rate has a value of 22.4% while the state with the least rate has a value of 8.3% of its population living below the federal poverty threshold.
From Figure 4 below, poverty rate (percentage of population living below the federal poverty threshold) is evenly distributed around the value of 15% across the states of America.
Figure 4: Box plot for the percentage of people living below the federal poverty threshold in the USA
Pairwise Bivariate Distribution
The following is a pairwise correlation comparison of the variables. A minimum of high school diploma is significantly correlated positively to having a minimum of bachelor’s degree, a minimum of high school diploma is significantly correlated negatively to the rate of property crime, and a minimum of high school diploma is significantly correlated negatively to the rate of poverty. Having a minimum of a bachelor’s degree is not significantly correlated with the rate of property crime. Having a minimum of a bachelor’s degree is significantly correlated negatively to poverty rate. The rate of property crime is significantly correlated positively to the rate of poverty.
High school diploma and rate of property crime
Figure 5: A plot of crime rate versus percentage of population with at least a high school diploma
Simple linear regression results:
Dependent Variable: PropCrimeRate
Independent Variable: %HSDiploma
PropCrimeRate = 8930.3385 – 69.743256 %HSDiploma
Sample size: 51
R (correlation coefficient) = -0.37967343
R-sq = 0.14415191
Estimate of error standard deviation: 567.02966
The regression results of running crime rate against percentage with at least a high school diploma, the effect of having a high school diploma on the rate of property crime is significant at 0.0001 level of significance. For every increase in percentage of people having at least a high school diploma, property crime rate reduces by 69.74 reported cases for every 100,000 people.
High school diploma and rate of poverty
Figure 5: A plot of percentage of poverty versus percentage of population with at least a high school diploma
Simple linear regression results:
Dependent Variable: %POVERTY
Independent Variable: %HSDiploma
%POVERTY = 77.57839 – 0.72093761 %HSDiploma
Sample size: 51
R (correlation coefficient) = -0.7564308
R-sq = 0.57218756
Estimate of error standard deviation: 2.0800348
From the results of running a regression of percentage of poverty versus percentage of population with at least a high school diploma, the effect of the percentage of people having at least a high school diploma on the percentage of people living below the poverty threshold is significant at 0.0001 level of significance. For every percentage increase in the number of people having at least a high school diploma, the percentage of people living below the federal poverty threshold reduces by 0.72%.
Bachelor’s degree and property crime
Simple linear regression results:
Dependent Variable: PropCrimeRate
Independent Variable: %BA
PropCrimeRate = 2923.6355 – 2.4809828 %BA
Sample size: 51
R (correlation coefficient) = -0.023401865
R-sq = 0.0005476473
Estimate of error standard deviation: 612.75728
The effect of the percentage of population having at least a bachelor’s degrees on the number of property crime is insignificant because The p-value is much larger than 0.05.
Bachelor’s degree and poverty rate
Simple linear regression results:
Dependent Variable: %POVERTY
Independent Variable: %BA
%POVERTY = 22.1782 – 0.26518895 %BA
Sample size: 51
R (correlation coefficient) = -0.4821095
R-sq = 0.23242957
Estimate of error standard deviation: 2.7861405
At 0.0001 level of significance, the effect of percentage of population having at least a bachelor’s degree on the percentage of population living below poverty threshold is significant. For every percentage increase in the number of people having at least a bachelor’s degree causes a 0.27% reduction in the population living below the federal poverty threshold
Poverty rate and property crime
Simple linear regression results:
Simple linear regression results:
Dependent Variable: PropCrimeRate
Independent Variable: %POVERTY
PropCrimeRate = 1259.6772 + 107.96159 %POVERTY
Sample size: 51
R (correlation coefficient) = 0.56015178
R-sq = 0.31377002
Estimate of error standard deviation: 507.74105
The effect of poverty on crime is significant at 0.0001 level of significance. For every unit increase in the percentage of people living below the federal poverty threshold, the number of reported property crimes increases by about 108 reported cases for every 100, 000 of the population.
Summary and Investigation Suggestions
From the investigation, the effect of high school education on poverty is significant. The effect of having bachelor degrees on both crime and poverty is significant. On running multiple regression to find the result of both high school and bachelor’s degree on poverty, both their effects are found to be significant. Consequently, the rate of poverty has an effect on the rate of property crime. An increase in poverty causes an increase in property crimes.
For the purpose of human development and considering the analysis was done in this work, policies need to be put in place such that the percentage of people with high school diplomas and bachelor degrees should increase. This increase will, in turn, cause a decrease in poverty levels that consequentially cause a reduction in the number of property crimes.
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Bibliography
Alkire, S. 2010. Human Development: Definitions, Critiques, and Related Concepts. Retrieved from http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/hdrp_2010_01.pdf
Hjalamrsson, R, and Lochner, L. 2012. The Impact of Education on Crime: Nternational Evidence. Retrieved from http://www.economics.handels.gu.se/digitalAssets/1439/1439011_49- 55_research_lochner.pdf
ETS. N. d. Poverty and Education: Finding the way forward. Retrieved from https://www.ets.org/s/research/pdf/poverty_and_education_report.pdf
