NEW YORK, April 21 (Xinhua) -- With inflation hitting a 40-year high in the United States, criminologists from the University of Missouri-St. Louis are now finding a link to some higher crime rates in major U.S. cities, Fox News reported on Tuesday.

       Their research showed that inflation has driven up so-called "acquisitive crime," a type of crime done for financial gain, for example, robbery, burglary and theft.

       So far, crime rates across the country have supported this research. In Orlando, Florida, commercial robberies have doubled so far in 2022 compared to the same time period in 2021. Now, business owners across the state are on edge, the report said.

       According to criminologists, inflation has been the motivating factor behind the rising crime rate, said the report.

       Crime rates skyrocketed during periods of high inflation for the last half-century in the United States. In the 1970s and through the early 1980s, U.S. inflation rates were picking out at about 15 percent per year, and that was also a period of pretty dramatic crime rises in the country, the report cited the research as saying.