In U.S., 37% Do Not Feel Safe Walking at Night Near Home.
Byline: Andrew Dugan
Synopsis: In the U.S., 37% of adults say there are areas within a mile of their home where they do not feel safe walking alone at night. Women are far more likely than men to say they don't feel safe.
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Fewer than four in 10 adults in the U.S. (37%) say there is an area within a mile of where they live where they would be afraid to walk alone at night, similar to Americans' attitudes over the last decade and a half. Most Americans continue to feel safe in their immediate communities, with 63% saying they would not be afraid to walk alone there at night.
These results come from Gallup's annual Crime survey, conducted Oct. 12-15. The 37% of U.S. adults who say they would not feel safe walking alone near their home is in line with the historical average for the question (39%), which dates back to 1965. But responses to this question have not always been so stable. In the 1970s and 1980s, there was a steep rise in the percentage of U.S. adults feeling unsafe in their communities, culminating in the 1982 survey, when nearly half (48%) of Americans said they were afraid to walk alone at night in their neighborhood.
In tandem with plunging crime rates in 1990s, Americans increasingly reported feeling safe in walking alone in their area at night. By 2001, a record low of 30% said they would not feel safe walking alone at night, and the percentage has risen only marginally since then.
Gallup's World Poll asks a similar question: "Do you feel safe walking alone at night in the city or area where you live?" In 2013, 75% of Americans answered affirmatively, which is higher than the global average of 64% for all 133 countries surveyed. The U.S. score is also slightly higher than average for wealthy countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (69%).
"Gender Gap" in Security Still Exists
Nearly half of all women, 45%, say they do not feel safe walking alone at night, compared with 27% of men. Though substantial, this 18-percentage-point "safety gap" between the genders is in line with historical trends, and larger gulfs have been measured in the recent past. For instance, in 2010, 50% of women said they did not feel safe walking at home at night, compared with 22% of men, for a difference of 28 points.
This is not to say the gender safety gap hasn't narrowed somewhat in this era of lower crime rates. In 1982, more than six in 10 women (64%) said they did not feel safe walking alone...
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