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      Is poverty the mother of crime? Evidence from homicide rates in China

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      PLoS ONE
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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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          Social Structure and Anomie

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            Econometric methods for fractional response variables with an application to 401(k) plan participation rates

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              Participation in Illegitimate Activities: A Theoretical and Empirical Investigation

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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Role: ConceptualizationRole: Formal analysisRole: Project administrationRole: Writing – original draftRole: Writing – review & editing
                Role: InvestigationRole: MethodologyRole: SupervisionRole: Writing – review & editing
                Role: Data curationRole: InvestigationRole: ResourcesRole: SoftwareRole: ValidationRole: VisualizationRole: Writing – original draft
                Role: Editor
                Journal
                PLoS One
                PLoS ONE
                plos
                plosone
                PLoS ONE
                Public Library of Science (San Francisco, CA USA )
                1932-6203
                2020
                18 May 2020
                : 15
                : 5
                : e0233034
                Affiliations
                [1 ] Center for Yellow River Civilization and Sustainable Development, and School of Economics, Henan University, Kaifeng, Henan Province, China
                [2 ] Department of Management, Technology and Economics, ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland
                [3 ] Institute of Economics and Management, Henan Agricultural University, Zhengzhou, Henan Province, China
                Xiamen University, CHINA
                Author notes

                Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

                Author information
                http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9651-4609
                Article
                PONE-D-19-35026
                10.1371/journal.pone.0233034
                7234816
                32422646
                7b03949c-8672-4a13-95cb-465cce4b1153
                © 2020 Dong et al

                This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

                History
                : 18 December 2019
                : 27 April 2020
                Page count
                Figures: 3, Tables: 5, Pages: 22
                Funding
                Funded by: funder-id http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100004543, China Scholarship Council;
                Award ID: 201808410386
                Award Recipient :
                This study was supported by the Center of Yellow River Civilization and Sustainable Development; China Scholarship Council (grant number: 201808410386).The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
                Categories
                Research Article
                Social Sciences
                Sociology
                Criminology
                Crime
                Homicide
                Medicine and Health Sciences
                Epidemiology
                Medical Risk Factors
                Traumatic Injury Risk Factors
                Violent Crime
                Medicine and Health Sciences
                Public and Occupational Health
                Traumatic Injury Risk Factors
                Violent Crime
                Social Sciences
                Sociology
                Criminology
                Crime
                Violent Crime
                Earth Sciences
                Geography
                Geographic Areas
                Urban Areas
                People and Places
                Geographical Locations
                Asia
                China
                Earth Sciences
                Geography
                Geographic Areas
                Rural Areas
                Social Sciences
                Sociology
                Criminology
                Crime
                Social Sciences
                Sociology
                Criminology
                Police
                People and Places
                Population Groupings
                Professions
                Police
                Social Sciences
                Economics
                Labor Economics
                Employment
                Unemployment Rates
                Social Sciences
                Economics
                Labor Economics
                Unemployment Rates
                Social Sciences
                Economics
                Macroeconomics
                Unemployment Rates
                Custom metadata
                The data underlying the results presented in the study are available from PKULAW.COM ( http://www.pkulaw.cn) and CEIC database ( http://www.ceicdata.com). Data providers are commercial and access is possible only if users subscribe. Reproducing or publicizing the data to a third party is not permitted.

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