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I got into a discussion with someone regarding whether poverty was sufficient to explain disparate crime rates between different ethnicities. To this end, I ended up citing https://www.city-journal.org/poverty-and-violent-crime-dont-go-hand-in-hand this study, which goes into the poverty level of NYC of different ethnicities, and their crime rate. It demonstrated that although Asians had higher rates of poverty in NYC, compared to even African Americans, their crime rate remained the lowest of the various ethnicities studied.
The response of the person was 1) that because NYC was the 'wealthiest city in the US', the city was not going to be representative of the average American. Specifically, he stated "I think if you extrapolate data from the outliers (the highest cost of living city) onto the average American, then you are trying to "smuggle in hidden confounders" which is why I have an issue with your study." Later on, he also noted that 2) the study was not conducted over a long period of time, but rather only looking at data from 2020. Therefore, it could be a temporary effect.
My response to his criticism was pointing out that when trying to see whether there are differences between different groups, it isn't necessarily important for the individuals studies to be the centered around the "average" individual per say. What's important is that the individuals studied all have been subjected to the same incentives and forces which cause this deviation from the average. That way, their effects cancel out, unless we can see some specific reason for there to be an unequal effect on each ethnicity.
Yes, NY is a non-modal city, but the influences that fact has should equally affect white people, black people, and asian people. Therefore, whatever distortion NYC has by its citizens being on average richer, shouldn't matter, because 1) we are explicitly looking at comparative income/poverty level, and there are still poor people in NYC, and 2) the effects cancel out because everyone in NYC being subjected to the special circumstances of NYC.
This in fact makes the study better than a 'naive' use of survey data across the US, because Asian people, Black people, and white people are distributed unevenly across the country, and in fact a more general survey would be liable to confounders like rural vs urban location, north vs south, etc., whereas studying a single city would in fact be a superior methodology.
We never got to actually discuss whether the data being from 2020 was sufficient to ignore the study. I suppose it could have gone to talking about the effects of Covid on crime, especially hate crimes, but the conversation was unable to get even close to this.
On reflection, (since the conversation I had was very unsatisfying with the guy), I wanted to see whether that logic was actually sound, or if in fact it was just me sounding good in the moment.
I also was wondering if people had other similar studies which demonstrated that poverty was not sufficient to explain variable crime rates across ethnicities, especially when it comes to Asians and Asian Americans.
Obligatory link - RCADFM, although note 'explained' here means 'regression coefficients' as opposed to 'clearly cannot be caused by'.
His objections were poor, and indeed asian crime rates are lower than other ethnicities countrywide. But that's what you'd expect from random chats on the internet - an actual attempt to resolve the question would've brought in more studies, rather than just throwing out objections. Reasons sounding dumber than those reasons can be enough to sink any particular study, though. Be wary of "random guy's objections to this were bad, therefore its methodology is good", you're not gonna find any signal in that.
Yes, but Asians are also richer than other ethnicities nationwide. What's interesting about New York City is that for some reason they have the highest poverty rate, and still commit the least crime.
Why Asians have such high poverty rates in New York City is an interesting question. I virtually never see this discussed except as a throwaway line in articles promoting the "Model Minority Myth" myth. I suspect that it has something to do with NYC being a destination for Asian immigrants with limited English and technical skills, and possibly some confounding by age (which would be relevant to the crime issue as well), but I'm not sure.
I suspect a lot of it is due to NYC Asians running small businesses and engaging in a lot of tax evasion, which makes them look artificially poorer than they actually are. No good evidence, though, just suspicion.
Now that you mention it, I'm having trouble finding it now, but I remember reading about some Chinese neighborhood in the US or Canada that ostensibly had a very high poverty rate, but was full of million-dollar houses, the explanation being that there was a ton of tax evasion going on.
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Isn’t the pattern for Asian immigrants to be poor the first generation but have sky-high upward mobility thereafter? If NYC’s Asian population is more heavily 1st gen, or NYC has lower upward mobility, that could also be a factor.
I definitely agree with the tax evasion thing but think it’s probably not the explanatory factor.
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Depending how the stats are reported, there's also a significant number of Asian college students at NYU/Columbia/Fordham/CUNY/Etc who have very low incomes, even if they are factually rich growing up and once they get a job they're in poverty statistically when they're in school. Idk if that matters in a city that size, but it's there.
Good point, but as you observe, I don’t think it matters in city of that scale. Even if there were 10 schools with 10 000 poor Asians in each, that would still only add up to less than 10% of NYC Asians.
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