Violência e fatores socioeconômicos: uma análise econométrica espacial dos bairros de Fortaleza

Abstract

This study investigates the relationship between crime and socioeconomic factors across 114 neighborhoods in Fortaleza from 2010 to 2015, considering thefts, robberies, and homicides. It sets as its main objective to examine how poverty, income inequality, per capita income, population density, and formal employment shape intraurban crime patterns. It applies spatial econometric techniques, emphasizing the Spatial Autoregressive Model (SAR), and incorporates heterogeneity through spatial regimes defined via the REDCAP algorithm, which segments the city into three contiguous clusters with distinct socioeconomic profiles. The results show that explanatory effects are not spatially homogeneous: poverty exerts a robust and increasing impact on homicides in highly vulnerable areas; inequality raises robberies in contexts of extreme deprivation and produces counterintuitive effects on homicides; per capita income reduces robberies in poor neighborhoods but increases them in lower–middle-class areas; population density reduces property crimes under specific configurations; and formal employment, while desirable, can intensify robberies in deprived territories when rising urban flows are not matched by proportional protection. These findings confirm the relevance of intraurban hete-rogeneity and reveal the limitations of global models with constant coefficients. The study concludes that prevention and security policies must be territorially oriented and tailored to each cluster’s specificities, combining social inclusion, urban development, community policing, and strengthened local cohesion to address the unequal geography of urban violence effectively.