The eternal dilemma: Poverty or inequality in the explanation of homicides. Unexpected findings and a proposal to overcome the dilemma

Abstract

In Mexico, crime has increased and diversified over the last 20 years, but we have few theoretical, empirically verified, explanations. Here I explore a way of explaining violent crime in municipalities with more than 100,000 inhabitants, taking intentional homicide in 2011 as the observable variable. I start from explanations of crime based on poverty and inequality. To this end, I problematize this type of explanations and run regression models testing the hypotheses of poverty or inequality as the explanatory variable. At the end I discuss the results obtained and propose a new research design that overcomes the limitations of the one carried out and the dilemma posed in the title.