Research suggests a link between homicide and inequality

Research suggests a link between homicide and inequality(theguardian.com)

25 points by kafkaesq 8 years ago | 12 comments

ameister14 8 years ago |

How they dismiss the extreme negative correlation between income inequality and homicide rate is funny:

"Daly says that no one knows what time lag to expect between a rise in inequality and a rise in murder – but if it does take a few decades, this could be the start of a troubling trend, not a blip."

Income inequality rose, and homicide rate rose, then income inequality rose much faster and homicide rate dropped dramatically.

logingone 8 years ago | |

Exactly, and "...the 1% took 85% of income growth and the situation has only worsened since. During that time, however, homicide rates showed nearly the opposite pattern". This is dishonest Guardian agenda. Even before getting to that dismissal the article never mentioned the word poverty which is often confused with inequality, probably deliberately by the likes of the Guardian who won't be happy until the UK has re-created the Venezuelan economy.

sevenfive 8 years ago |

In the US, inequality has been mostly driven by the top 1-10% outstripping everyone else. But the murders described in the article (and that comprise most of thise statistics) are obviously between two 90%ers. So the Guardian's conclusion that inequality trends will cause more murders hardly follows. As other comment points out, poverty is the relevant variable here.

woodandsteel 8 years ago |

According to the NRA, the reason poor people kill each other so much is they don't have enough guns.

gremlinsinc 8 years ago |

An ironic feedback loop would be if murders targeted only the 1%, then essentially they'd lower the murder rate by thinning out inequality.

mc32 8 years ago | |

Probably the opposite would occur. It likely would have a "decapitation" effect on the economy and everyone would become poor --kind of like what we see in VZ, where industries were nationalized, owners skipped town, state didn't have the expertise and state exacerbated issue by not doing basic maintenance and upgrades. End result is more poverty and more murder, etc.

norswap 8 years ago |

Original title: The surprising factors driving murder rates: income inequality and respect (emphasis mine)

Surprising, really?

tptacek 8 years ago | |

When the mods take the time to remove bait from a title, especially when it's bait you disagree with, please don't bring it back to the thread.

otakucode 8 years ago |

Research was done decades ago across all cultures on the globe looking for predictors of violent crime. Hundreds of different factors were considered and evaluated. Only 1 had significant predictive power. Economic disparity. Just poverty itself was OK - so long as it was not present in close proximity to abundance. In every single place where large economic disparity existed, violent crime was high. In no place where economic disparity was absent was violent crime high.

Economic disparity causes violent crime. To believe you can accept and encourage one without also accepting and encouraging the other is ignorant, childish, and utterly irrational.

(the book 'Nine Crazy Ideas in Science' in chapter 1 cites a bunch of the research done in this field, they were specifically looking for the influence of overall gun ownership rates but found gun ownership prevalence has no predictive power for violent crime rates)

logfromblammo 8 years ago | |

I think more recent research also suggests Pb pollution levels as a predictive factor, with a 22 year lead time (yes, pun intended).

So the use of tetra-ethyl lead in vehicle fuel from 1920 to 1975 in the US roughly correlates with greater nationwide violence between 1942 and 1997. Specific tracts known to have ongoing lead contamination problems show stronger correlations.

So if lead pollution had not been tackled in the 70s, poor people in the alternate-timeline 2017 might be even more murdery, now that wealth imbalances are worse. Their opioid epidemic might look more like the 1980s crack epidemic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead-crime_hypothesis

otakucode 8 years ago | | |

There should be much better results than simply one single nation for that... China in particular should be extremely indicative. While the US 'banned' leaded gasoline and it took decades to actually phase out its use, China banned it and within 18 months use stopped entirely. While the US saw gradual declines, China should see a precipitous drop. It does make me wonder about places like parts of Africa which seem to have economic disparity driving violence right alongside nations which are stupendously poor (the poorest in the world) but which are very peaceful and have some of the lowest violent crime rates in the world as they lack economic disparity (everyone is similarly impoverished). Does the poor nation not use leaded gasoline or have other sources of lead? What happened in Europe with regards to leaded gasoline? Does Indonesia still use leaded gas? If looking for consequences of human nature, it's always a mistake to omit any culture.

I know that hookworm played a significantly role in the US south, and after its eradication things improved every single year since. Hookworm is still a major problem in most of Africa, though. Infection with hookworm in childhood results in permanent IQ loss, regardless of whether it is later treated, the damage remains.

My personal opinion is that we should not necessarily expect the actual monetary scale of the difference to accurately predict the magnitude of the violent crime. Most likely, the economic disparity is a proxy for something else that does not scale the same as the monetary values do. Namely control. Economic disparity always coexists with a small group exerting control upon a larger one to extract the value they create and take it for themselves. Humans always respond negatively to control - both being controlled and exerting control on others. They react pretty predictably, too. They assert control over themselves and their own bodies, then seek to establish status by being seen as dominant in their peer group, then seek to establish an alternative power hierarchy from the overaching order, then engage in plays for dominance between those alternative hierarchies (gangs), then eventually the gangs merge and become an army who goes to war against the overarching order. It happens in families, in schools, in prisons, in militaries, in nations, everywhere. Different scales, and different manifestations, but control is a poison to humans.