Volume 22, Issue 4 p. 531-550

Poverty, Inequality, and City Homicide Rates

Some Not So Unexpected Findings

WILLIAM C. BAILEY

WILLIAM C. BAILEY

Cleveland State University

William C. Bailey received his Ph.D. in sociology from Washington State University and is currently Professor of Sociology and Associate Dean of the Graduate College at Cleveland State University. His major research interests are in the areas of the deterrent and other preventive effects of legal sanctions, and socioeconomic and demographic patterns of criminal violence.

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First published: November 1984
Citations: 170

Abstract

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 M e s m 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 only a slight and nonsignificant relationship between relative economic deprivation (income inequality) and homicides. Unlike Messner, however, I do not consider this finding surprising. At best, there is only a weak theoretical linkage between homicide and relative economic deprivation. Accordingly, the results of this investigation for both absolute and relative deprivation are neither “perplexing” nor do they warrant the “serious reconsideration of the linkages between poverty, inequality and the homicide rate” that Messner (1982: 112) calls for.

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