Relative Deprivation, Absolute Deprivation, and Homicide: Testing an Interaction Between Income Inequality and Disadvantage

Abstract

Both relative and absolute deprivation have effects on crime. These two concepts may be complementary, but much scholarship has treated them as separate. The present study assesses whether the effects of relative and absolute deprivation, measured as income inequality and disadvantage, respectively, interact in their effect on known homicide counts in U.S. counties. A multilevel regression model shows that there is a significant interaction between income inequality and disadvantage predicting homicide counts known to police. The plot of this interaction shows that when disadvantage is extremely high, increasing income inequality does not increase known homicides. The less disadvantage there is, the greater the effect of increasing income inequality on homicide counts in U.S. counties. This finding suggests that the effect of relative deprivation on known homicide is contingent on levels of absolute deprivation and vice versa. The implication of this finding is discussed.

The Effect of Absolute and Relative Deprivation on Homicides in Brazil

“…High levels of absolute deprivation such as poverty and unemployment and relative deprivation such as inequality and social exclusion result in high level of crime (Danziger & Wheeler, 1975;Merton, 1938;Messner & Rosenfeld, 2012). In the case of violence, Burraston et al (2018Burraston et al ( , 2019 provided evidence regarding the association of homicide rates with absolute and relative deprivation in the U.S. counties. In that case, the effect of both deprivations on homicide is dependent on the levels of one another, that is, an interactive effect on homicide.…”

“…The homicide rate of Global South countries is many times that of the U.S. (UNODC, 2019) likewise other socioeconomic indicators on deprivation (UNDP, 2018). Accordingly, the evidence provided in Burraston et al (2018Burraston et al ( , 2019) may be limited regarding the effects of deprivation, especially at extremely high levels.…”

“…Bearing on a similar theoretical background and model specification, this study put forward the following hypotheses regarding Brazil as a model of the Global South perspective H1: unemployment (as a measure for absolute deprivation) and income inequality (as a measure of relative deprivation) have positive effect on homicide levels (see Lee et al, 2014), and; H2: unemployment and income inequality have an interactive or multiplicative effect on homicide levels when combined (see e.g., Burraston et al, 2018Burraston et al, , 2019.…”

“…It is common to investigate the determinants of violent crimes by estimating linear models of the logarithmized rate of homicide per 100 thousand population. However, in line with Burraston et al (2019), count models of homicide are estimated. The first motivation for this methodological approach is that homicide data follow the "law of rare events" characterized in Cameron and Trivedi (2001) and, thus, are naturally skewed right, that is, there are many cases of few or zero homicide count and few cases of high homicide count (Figure 2).…”

Identifying the Dynamic Effects of Income Inequality on Crime

“…Thus, the theory postulates that crime rates should increase as the income gap between the wealthy and the poor widens. Empirical tests of this theory can be found in Stiles, Liu and Kaplan (2000), and Burraston et al (2018). Shaw and McKay's (1942) social disorganization theory goes beyond the independent effects of relative deprivation on crime, and rather focuses on how low economic status, Notes: Author's calculations based on data described in text ethnic heterogeneity, residential mobility, and family disruption affect the ability of a community to realize the common values of its residents and maintain effective social controls (Kornhauser, 1978;Bursik, 1988).…”