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Is poverty the mother of crime? Evidence from homicide rates in China

Income inequality is blamed for being the main driver of violent crime by the majority of the literature. However, earlier work on the topic largely neglects the role of poverty and income levels as opposed to income inequality. The current paper uses all court verdicts for homicide cases in China b...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Dong, Baomin, Egger, Peter H., Guo, Yibei
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7234816/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32422646
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0233034
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author Dong, Baomin
Egger, Peter H.
Guo, Yibei
author_facet Dong, Baomin
Egger, Peter H.
Guo, Yibei
author_sort Dong, Baomin
collection PubMed
description Income inequality is blamed for being the main driver of violent crime by the majority of the literature. However, earlier work on the topic largely neglects the role of poverty and income levels as opposed to income inequality. The current paper uses all court verdicts for homicide cases in China between 2014 and 2016, as well as various inequality measures calculated from 2005 mini census data together with a host of control variables to shed light on the relationship at the detailed Chinese prefecture-level. The results suggest that it is the poverty and low income level, rather than income inequality, that is positively related to homicide rates. We show that the internal rural-urban migration from more violent localities contributes to the destination cities’ homicide rates. The poverty-homicide association implies that instead of “relative deprivation”, “absolute deprivation” is mainly responsible for violent crime. Poverty is the mother of crime. —Marcus Aurelius (121-180AD), Emperor of the Roman Empire.
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spelling pubmed-72348162020-06-02 Is poverty the mother of crime? Evidence from homicide rates in China Dong, Baomin Egger, Peter H. Guo, Yibei PLoS One Research Article Income inequality is blamed for being the main driver of violent crime by the majority of the literature. However, earlier work on the topic largely neglects the role of poverty and income levels as opposed to income inequality. The current paper uses all court verdicts for homicide cases in China between 2014 and 2016, as well as various inequality measures calculated from 2005 mini census data together with a host of control variables to shed light on the relationship at the detailed Chinese prefecture-level. The results suggest that it is the poverty and low income level, rather than income inequality, that is positively related to homicide rates. We show that the internal rural-urban migration from more violent localities contributes to the destination cities’ homicide rates. The poverty-homicide association implies that instead of “relative deprivation”, “absolute deprivation” is mainly responsible for violent crime. Poverty is the mother of crime. —Marcus Aurelius (121-180AD), Emperor of the Roman Empire. Public Library of Science 2020-05-18 /pmc/articles/PMC7234816/ /pubmed/32422646 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0233034 Text en © 2020 Dong et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Dong, Baomin
Egger, Peter H.
Guo, Yibei
Is poverty the mother of crime? Evidence from homicide rates in China
title Is poverty the mother of crime? Evidence from homicide rates in China
title_full Is poverty the mother of crime? Evidence from homicide rates in China
title_fullStr Is poverty the mother of crime? Evidence from homicide rates in China
title_full_unstemmed Is poverty the mother of crime? Evidence from homicide rates in China
title_short Is poverty the mother of crime? Evidence from homicide rates in China
title_sort is poverty the mother of crime? evidence from homicide rates in china
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7234816/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32422646
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0233034
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