A Sociological Analysis of the Effect of Economic Indicators on Homicide in Iran during 1995-2018

More than 464,000 people are killed each year worldwide. Homicide as a violent crime occurs in all countries, regardless of political, religious, or economic background. It is considered as a major public health issue. In explaining homicide, some studies have examined this phenomenon at the macro level and tried to explain the relationship between economic indicators and homicide. As a result, 4 approaches have been developed.  The first view is that by improving economic indicators, homicide rates decrease. The mechanism of this negative relationship involves the effect of economic development on reducing or eliminating deprivation. Economic deprivation causes anger, frustration, and aggression. By lowering the tolerance threshold, it paves the way for murder in the society. The second view is that by improving economic indicators, homicide rates increase. The mechanism of this positive relationship is that the improvement of economic indicators would lead to urbanization, which weakens social cohesion and control by increasing heterogeneity and inequality and thus, the homicide rate rises in the society. The third view is that by declining economic indicators, homicide rates increase. The mechanism of this positive relationship originates from Durkheim's idea, which states that in the context of economic recession, one's status is impaired and individuals have difficulty in matching their expectations and abilities. The last view is that by declining economic recession, homicide rates decrease. The mechanism of this negative relationship originates from Henry and Short's idea of how people interpret this situation. If they attribute their misery and deprivation to macroeconomics and its performance, the homicide rate will decrease, but if they attribute their feelings to themselves, the homicide rate will raise. Although Iran is considered as one of the low-rate countries in terms of homicide, the homicide rate has been fluctuated during the past three decades. Since there is no longitudinal study of the relationship between economic indicators and homicide in Iran, the key question of the present study was whether there was a relationship between economic indicators and homicide rates in Iran or not.  

This time-series study examined the relationship between economic indicators, including GDP per capita, inflation, unemployment, women's participation in labor force, and the internet penetration, and homicide rate during 1995-2018. The research data were collected from the Iranian Statistical Center, the Central Bank of Iran, the Iranian police, and the World Bank. To investigate the short-run and long-run relationship between the variables, Auto-Regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) method was applied in Microfit 5 software. 

Based on the results, the long-run relationship of economic indices and homicide rate showed that GDP per capita and the internet penetration negatively affected homicide and women's participation in labor force had a positive impact on it. Moreover, there was no significant relationship of unemployment and inflation with homicide. The negative relationship between GDP per capita, the internet penetration, and homicide obviously confirmed the first theoretical approach (the more improving the economic indicators were, the less homicide rates appeared). On the other hand, the positive relationship between women's participation in labor force and homicide clearly affirmed the second theoretical perspective (the more improving the economic indicators were, the more homicide rates occurred). In the end, the following two key limitations had to be considered: 1) Iran's economy is mainly a state economy that is dependent on oil export and affected by foreign sanctions. Thus, a part of fluctuations in the economic indicators during the period of 1995-2018 was influenced by intensifying or improving the above mentioned factors, which could not be controllable by the author ; 2) There were other variables for measuring economic indicators, to which the author did not have access. It is clear that they must be also tested in order to obtain a more obvious perspective on the relationship between economic indices and homicide rates.