Does economic inequality breed murder? An empirical investigation of the relationship between economic inequality and homicide rates in Canadian provinces and CMAs

National and international research documents a relationship between greater economic inequality and higher homicide rates. However, much of this work uses simple cross sections at high levels of aggregation rather than longer time series of cities or districts and lacks controls for a more substantial range of confounding factors. Using longitudinal Canadian provincial-level data over the period 1982 to 2017, we occasionally find a positive correlation between inequality and homicides rates. However, the relationship between income inequality and homicide rates in Canada reverses to become negative when looking at Canadian census metropolitan areas (CMAs). Moreover, the province-level result between greater inequality and homicide rates also appears to break down once accounting for regional effects. We conclude that much of the literature that finds a relationship between greater economic inequality and homicide rates needs to be re-examined within a longer time and more disaggregated framework.