We estimated crime rates among 70 immigrant groups of origin in the Netherlands between 2005 and 2018. The results indicated that crime rates generally declined for each group during the period studied, as well as for the country as a whole, with a drop of about 50% since 2005. Immigrant groups varied widely in terms of crime rates, with East Asian countries lower and Muslim countries, as well as Dutch (former) colonial possessions in the Caribbean, higher than natives. We found that national IQ and the percentage of Muslims in the population of the countries of origin predicted relative differences in crime rates, r = 0.64 and 0.45, respectively, consistent with previous studies in both the Netherlands and other European countries. In addition, we surveyed 200 people living in the Netherlands to measure their preference for immigrants from each country of origin in terms of accepting more or less people from each country. Following Carl (2016), we calculated an average opposition metric for each country. This correlated strongly with the actual crime rates we obtained, r = 0.46 and 0.57, for the weighted and unweighted results, respectively. The main outliers in the regressions were the Dutch possessions of the (former) colonies, and when excluded, the correlations rise to 0.68 and 0.66, respectively. Regressions with likely confounders (percentage of Muslims, geographic fixed effects) showed that crime rates were still a useful predictor of opposition to specific countries. The results were interpreted as consistent with a rational voter preference for immigrants with lower crime susceptibility.
Comments
Be the first to comment!