The poverty-crime nexus revisited: absolute poverty, relative poverty, and crime rates in 105 countries

Dunn, A ORCID: 0000-0002-8261-6153 (2023) 'The poverty-crime nexus revisited: absolute poverty, relative poverty, and crime rates in 105 countries.' International Journal of Comparative and Applied Criminal Justice. ISSN 0192-4036

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Abstract

Criminological writing on the poverty-crime nexus has suffered from a lack of engagement with academic work about the definition of poverty. Furthermore, researchers who have connected nations’ crime rates to their poverty levels have tended to use infant mortality rates (a health outcome variable) as a proxy for poverty. This article presents findings from the first study of cross-national crime differences to use measures of “absolute” poverty (% with purchasing power under $1.90 per day at 2011 prices) and “relative” poverty (% with income below 50% of the national median). Both measures correlated positively with rates of assault/mugging, stealing, homicide, and intimate partner violence against women. Relative poverty is closely connected to inequality, while absolute poverty is closely connected to low socio-economic development, so the findings are consistent with the view that economic inequality is generally criminogenic whereas modernisation is not.

Item Type:	Article
Keywords:	absolute poverty, crime, Gallup World Poll, homicide, relative poverty,victim studies
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HA Statistics H Social Sciences > HM Sociology H Social Sciences > HN Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform
Divisions:	School of Sciences
Date Deposited:	12 Feb 2024 13:09
Last Modified:	14 Feb 2024 17:06
URI / Page ID:	https://researchspace.bathspa.ac.uk/id/eprint/16073

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