Margaret Langevin
When it comes to poverty and homicides a person may well assume that these two factors go hand in hand. However, according to the Eurostats, this does not appear to be the case.
Eurostats is a Directorate-General of the European Commission who gather information and provide databases and statistical data for the public’s use.
In the seventeen countries I have sampled across Europe, the data collected suggests that there is no clear correlation between national poverty levels and the number of homicides for the year 2013.
The countries analyzed include Czech Republic, Germany, Ireland, Greece, Spain, France, Croatia, Italy, Hungary, Netherlands, Austria, Poland, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.
Map Demonstration
The seventeen countries chosen were the countries that provided the most accurate and complete data set for homicides and poverty on Eurostat.
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https://margaretlangevin.cartodb.com/viz/5c702aac-92ec-11e5-bfa3-0e98b61680bf/public_map
To view the population of each country, the poverty percentage and homicide rate hover over each country. The countries filled in with the darker colors displays the countries with the highest poverty rate per 1,000 people.
Analyzing the data collected
The pattern of correlation conveyed is weak at best, but if it is rendered to exist, it would be described as a negative one.
The Pearson correlation states that there is no suggestible relationship between the two data sets. The correlation between the two variables is -.181. A figure closer to the number one would indicate a close link; however, since the number extracted from my data sets is a negative one, it indicates a high degree of negative correlation.
This scatter plot graph displays no correlation between homicide and poverty in the 17 sampled countries across Europe. As the poverty rate increases the homicide rate does not. The lack of linearity indicates that the two data sets are not linked.
Further Analysis
This data shows that Italy, Germany, the United Kingdom, Spain and France have the highest number of people living in poverty.
Comparing the previous graph to the bar graph demonstrating the homicide rate, someone would probably conclude that there is no correlation. The top five countries for the homicide rate include Hungary, Austria, Ireland, Poland and Finland.
Spain is another country that stands out from these two graphs. Spain would be listed among the top five countries with the highest poverty rate, but is in the bottom three countries of this list in terms homicides.
In Ireland, in 2013, 23 per cent of people lived in poverty and there were 1.81 homicides per 100,000 people. To put this into context, Ireland was listed as the twelfth highest country on this list in terms of poverty rate and third in terms of number of homicides.
As a comparison, the United Kingdom is listed tenth of these countries in terms of homicides and third in terms of poverty rate. 24.8 per cent of people in the United Kingdom are listed at risk of poverty or social exclusion
Iceland ranks as the lowest country for percentage of people living in poverty and the second lowest for the rate of homicide.
However, Greece comes in seventh for the country with the highest poverty percentage but comes in last when it comes to how many deaths by murder per 100,000 people. Using this data as an example, it shows there is no evident clear correlation between the two data sets.
Limitations
This data research is only based on statistics from the listed countries as a whole. Major cities in each country were not looked at individually it while doing this research. This could possibly skew the results shown, however marginally that may be.
It would be a compelling story to see if further investigation into whether or not homicides and poverty levels in major cities across these countries would show the same negative correlation. It would also be interesting to compare the homicide and poverty rates from the United States of America and other countries worldwide, and then compare them to countries across Europe.
Likewise, it would be interesting to compare different types of crime to the selected countries to see if it continues to show there is no clear correlation or if poverty rate could have a relationship with other types of crime.