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18 Crim. Just. Rev. 182 (1993)
Poverty, Income Inequality, and Violent Crime: A Meta-Analysis of Recent Aggregate Data Studies

handle is hein.journals/crmrev18 and id is 192 raw text is: Criminal Justice Review © 1993 College of Public and Urban Affairs Volume 18, Number 2, Autumn 1993 Georgia State University POVERTY, INCOME INEQUALITY, AND VIOLENT CRIME: A META-ANALYSIS OF RECENT AGGREGATE DATA STUDIES* Ching-Chi Hsieh and M. D. Pugh In the late 1970s and early 1980s, several important reviews of the literature failed to establish a clear consensus on the relationship between economic conditions and violent crime. The research presented here applies the procedures of meta-analysis to 34 aggregate data studies reporting on violent crime, poverty, and income inequality. These studies reported a total of 76 zero-order correlation coefficients for all measures of violent crime with either poverty or income inequality. Of the 76 coefficients, all but 2, or 97 percent, were positive. Of the positive coefficients, nearly 80 percent were of at least moderate strength (>.25). It is concluded that poverty and income inequality are each associated with violent crime. The analysis, however, shows considerable variation in the estimated size of the relationships and suggests that homicide and assault may be more closely associated with poverty or income inequality than are rape and robbery. Since 1980 a large body of research has been published on poverty, income inequality, and violent crime (assault, homicide, rape, and robbery). Some of these publications are largely or exclusively theoretical (Currie, 1985; Tittle, 1983), but the majority are empirical studies, and with a few important exceptions (Elliot & Huizinga, 1983) many of these recent works make use of cross-sectional, aggregate data at the national or subnational level of analysis. Today, there is a growing consensus that resource deprivation in general is an underlying cause of violent crime (Land, McCall, & Cohen, 1990; Messner & Golden, 1992) and that resource deprivation is especially associated with assault and homicide (McCall, Land, & Cohen, 1992). Assuming that poverty and income inequality are each an indicator of resource deprivation, a review of the previous research using the methods of meta-analysis should show evidence that poverty and income inequality are each correlated with violent crime and that these correlations are especially robust with respect to assault and homicide. Meta-analysis is intended as a way of establishing such basic facts, from which theories can be built (Hunter & Schmidt, 1990; Wells & Rankin, 1991). *This article is a revised version of a paper that was presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Criminology in San Francisco, California, on November 20, 1991.