How Inequality Quite Literally Kills

Why do we have murders? The “police procedurals” that dominate prime-time TV almost invariably end up blaming deranged delinquents. But the global academic “near consensus,” notes the just-released first Research Digest from Britain’s Equality Trust, blames inequality.

To prevent murder and manslaughter, the new digest relates, we need to be looking at the distribution of wealth, not just poverty.

Grand income divides, investigators note, impact homicide rates far more forcefully than low incomes. Wide divides, as one researcher explains, leave people “more sensitive to experiences of inferiority,” to “disrespect, loss of face, and humiliation,” the most common violence triggers.