Economic Inequality Causes Crime

 From Thom Hartmann's op ed here:

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Research published in the Oxford Economic Papers found that not only does inequality cause increases in crime (including violent crime), but the main variable is people’s perception of inequality: When the morbidly rich are conspicuous in their consumption, crime explodes faster than when they’re discreet.

“Using variation within US states over time, we document a robust association between the distribution of conspicuous consumption and violent crime,” authors Daniel and Joan Hicks noted.A study published in The Review of Economics and Statistics (Harvard/MIT) came to the same conclusion: inequality causes crime, not just poverty.

The World Economic Forum published a paper that looked at the relationship between inequality and crime in Mexico:

“Our key finding is that, in fact, municipalities with lower inequality saw lower rates of crime. In other words, while the overall national data reveals an apparent paradox; broken down by smaller geographical regions, the paradox does not hold — less economic disparity does lead to less crime.”

A study of 148,000 people across 142 countries found a similar association all over the world. The Economist magazine titled their review of it:

“The stark relationship between income inequality and crime.”

Research published by the Equality Trust in the UK, which studies the impacts of economic and social inequality, found:

“Small permanent decreases in inequality — such as reducing inequality from the level found in Spain to that in Canada — would reduce homicides by 20% and lead to a 23% long-term reduction in robberies.”

Inequality causes crime because it destroys social trust, the core fabric of any society. It essentially makes us crazy. Without social trust, empathy and shared values weaken and culture begins to disintegrate.