Inequality and the Homicide Rate in New York City

This paper examines the relationship between income inequality and the homicide rate in 59 geographic areas in New York City known as Community District Tabulation Areas (CDTAs). The premise for this paper is that community members in each CDTA share similar social characteristics and therefore these areas provide a useful lens through which to analyze ecological social phenomena such as homicide. The main hypothesis for this paper is that the homicide rate in the CDTAs will vary directly with the level of income inequality within each CDTA. The outputs from several models testing this hypothesis do not support this hypothesis. The models failed to produce a result showing a relationship between income inequality and the homicide rate that is statistically significant. However, the models did produce results showing a strong relationship between a composite of several indicators of disadvantage and the homicide rate in the CDTAs. The model also produces results that show a moderate relationship between the homicide rate and the racial makeup of CDTAs along with a moderate inverse relationship between voter turnout and the homicide rate.