from Hacker News

Research suggests a link between homicide and inequality

by kafkaesq on 12/8/17, 5:03 PM with 12 comments

  • by ameister14 on 12/8/17, 7:52 PM

    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.

  • by sevenfive on 12/8/17, 8:28 PM

    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.

  • by woodandsteel on 12/9/17, 11:49 PM

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

  • by gremlinsinc on 12/8/17, 11:51 PM

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

  • by norswap on 12/8/17, 7:21 PM

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

    Surprising, really?

  • by otakucode on 12/8/17, 8:31 PM

    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)