Using Machine Learning to Understand the Impacts of Climatic Variability on Human Behavior

Is criminal behavior influenced by the quality of air?

In this project, we use detailed daily data from the Indian state of Karnataka to estimate the relationship between ambient air pollution and crime incidents.

Our results indicate that a one-standard-deviation increase in air pollution, measured as the daily concentration level of PM 2.5, is associated with an increase of 2.3% in the number of violent crimes (significant at the 1% level). We find no effect on property crimes.

To verify that the estimated relationship is in fact causal, we exploit atmospheric thermal inversions as a source of plausibly exogenous variation in the daily level of air pollution. These results suggest that investment in pollution abatement is advantageous not only through improvements in health outcomes but also via improving public safety.