ArticlePloS one2020
Is poverty the mother of crime? Evidence from homicide rates in China.
Article in PloS one, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed.
- MetaCity: Data-driven sustainable development of complex cities.Innovation (Cambridge (Mass.)) · 2025Review
- Public Reporting and Consumer Demand in the Home Health Sector.Medical care research and review : MCRR · 2024Article
- Is society caught up in a Death Spiral? Modeling societal demise and its reversal.Frontiers in sociology · 2024Review
- Socio-demographic, clinical and offense-related characteristics of forensic psychiatric inpatients in Hunan, China: a cross-sectional survey.BMC psychiatry · 2023Article
- Years of Life Lost (YLLs) Due to Suicide and Homicide in Ilam Province: Iran, 2014-2018.Bulletin of emergency and trauma · 2022Article
- Socioeconomic inequality in tobacco use in Kenya: a concentration analysis.International journal of health economics and management · 2021Article
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
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Abstract
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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