Center for Yellow River Civilization and Sustainable Development, and School of Economics, Henan University, Kaifeng, Henan Province, China.
Department of Management, Technology and Economics, ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland.
PLoS One. 2020 May 18;15(5):e0233034. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0233034. eCollection 2020.
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.
收入不平等被大多数文献归咎于暴力犯罪的主要驱动因素。然而，早期关于这个话题的研究在很大程度上忽略了贫困和收入水平相对于收入不平等的作用。本文利用了 2014 年至 2016 年中国所有的凶杀案法庭判决，以及从 2005 年人口普查数据中计算得出的各种不平等指标，以及大量的控制变量，来揭示在中国更详细的地级市层面上的关系。结果表明，与凶杀率呈正相关的是贫困和低收入水平，而不是收入不平等。我们表明，来自暴力程度更高地区的农村内部向城市迁移，会导致目的地城市的凶杀率上升。贫困与凶杀的关联表明，造成暴力犯罪的主要原因是“绝对贫困”，而不是“相对剥夺”。贫穷是犯罪之母。——马可·奥勒留（公元 121 年-180 年），罗马帝国皇帝。
