The effect of poverty and social protection on national homicide rates: Direct and moderating effects☆
Highlights
► Social protection is meant alleviate the ills of poverty, not inequality. ► With a sample of 30 nations, we estimate a series of WLS regression models. ► Social protection has a significant negative effect on national homicide rates. ► Social protection diminishes the strength of the poverty–homicide association.
Introduction
Poverty is one of the most consistent predictors of homicide rates in the empirical literature on the structural covariates of violent crime in the United States (Messner and Rosenfeld, 1999, Pridemore, 2002, Sampson and Lauritsen, 1994). After a long absence in the analogous cross-national literature, a small number of recent studies have shown a positive and significant association between poverty and national homicide rates (Paré, 2006, Pridemore, 2008, Pridemore, 2011). Prior to this recent research on poverty, inequality had been the focus of many cross-national studies of homicide (for reviews see LaFree, 1999, Messner and Rosenfeld, 2006). As such, several studies that examined the potential buffering effects of social protection and related phenomena like decommodification (Esping-Andersen, 1990) concentrated on the ability of these constructs to moderate the effects of inequality on national homicide rates (Messner and Rosenfeld, 2006, Pratt and Godsey, 2002, Savolainen, 2000). While empirical results largely support this hypothesis, theoretical questions remain about the inequality-homicide association and exactly what social protection policies are meant to alleviate.
Following the lead of earlier researchers (Conway and Norton, 2002, Paré, 2006, Pridemore, 2008, Pridemore, 2011), we argue that the economic components of policies aimed at social protection, social and economic welfare, and decommodification are directed at and meant to support those living in or near poverty in an attempt to provide at least a subsistence minimum level of living. An indirect consequence of such support may be to reduce inequality, but its direct aim is to decrease the social and economic harms caused by poverty. Therefore, we should not only expect a negative direct effect of social support on homicide rates, but we would expect that the strength of the positive association between poverty and homicide rates will be weaker in nations that offer greater social protection to its most vulnerable citizens. The poverty–homicide association has been tested in only a handful of recent cross-national studies, and the moderating effects of social protection on the association between poverty and homicide have yet to be assessed. Thus, our study (1) adds to the small but growing empirical literature gauging if poverty matters for the variation in cross-national homicide rates and (2) tests for the first time if any poverty–homicide association is moderated by social protection.
Section snippets
Poverty and cross-national homicide rates
Theoretical explanations for an association between poverty and homicide at the cross-national level may be drawn from multiple social structure theories, especially those situated within the anomie tradition. For example, Institutional Anomie Theory (IAT) makes the claim that, taken on its own, poverty cannot independently explain differences in crime rates across nations (Messner and Rosenfeld, 2006). Instead, it could be theorized that high poverty rates are symptoms of institutional
Data
To test the hypotheses, we gathered data for 30 nations. As discussed below, the sample size was limited to those nations for which the key measure of social support was available. Unless otherwise stated below, all data were for the year 2004. Appendix A contains a list of nations employed in the analysis.
Discussion
The focus of most cross-national research on the structural covariates of homicide has been on inequality. As a result, most studies examining the moderating effects of social protection, social welfare, decommodification, and related phenomena have focused on their ability to condition the effects of inequality on national homicide rates. However, a small but growing number of recent cross-national studies have found an association between poverty and homicide net of other structural
Conclusion
This paper had three objectives. The first was to provide another test of the poverty–homicide thesis since this remains relatively new to the cross-national literature. The second objective was to test if social protection has a significant negative association with national homicide rates even when poverty is included in the model. Both of these variables had been shown to be associated with national homicide rates in prior studies. Our goal was not simply provide another test, but to set up
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We thank Mitch Chamlin and Rick Rosenfeld for their helpful critiques of an earlier draft of this manuscript. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2011 annual meetings of the American Society of Criminology.