THE DETERMINANTS OF CRIMINAL VICTIMIZATION IN SÃO PAULO STATE

In this paper an exploratory research of the determinants of criminal victimization in São Paulo state is conducted using the life-style and opportunity models with Seade's 1998 Pesquisa de Condição de Vida (Life Condition Survey). São Paulo is the most populous Brazilian state with 37 million inhabitants, responding for more than one third of the Brazilian GDP. Our results indicate that the life-style and opportunity models had a good fitting to the data. As expected, the likelihood of being a burglary/larceny victim is increasing in income and if the person is male, and it decreases if the person is married and has few years of schooling. In relation to assault, the victimization likelihood increases considerably if the person is asian, single or divorced, and foreigner, on the other hand, it is decreasing in income and years of schooling, and it is smaller for black or multi-racial background people.