Criminology Commons^™

Poverty, Inequality, And City Homicide Rates: Some Not So Unexpected Findings, William C. Bailey

Sociology & Criminology Faculty Publications

Messner's recent investigation of homicide and relative and absolute economic deprivation is replicated here, but cities rather than SMSA's and three years (1950, 1960, 1970) rather than one (1970) are considered. Because of tremendous intra-unit variation for SMSAs with respect to homicides and sociodemographic characteristics (an important variation that is masked when data are aggregated on a SMSA level), cities are a preferable unit of analysis in cross-sectional investigations of homicide. Where Messner found a significant negative relationship between percentage of poverty (absolute deprivation) and homicides, I consistently find the opposite pattern as predicted. In both studies, however, there is …