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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.
There is no way that any factor is sufficient to explain any phenomenon that involves human behavior.
I don't think that is particularly helpful, because it defines "poverty" as "below the official poverty line plus adjustments," which is actually pretty high. What about more extreme poverty? If you look at the Census Bureau income spreadsheet here, it says that, at the national level, the pct of Asian American household with income under 15,000 in 2019 was 6.3% versus 17% for "Black only." Similarly, according to the chart on page 4 here, in 2018 the pct of 9-yr-olds in deep poverty (1/2 of the official poverty line) nationally was 3 percent for Asian Americans and 18 percent for African Americans.
Moreover, the data he uses includes COVID relief -- in fact, the key takeaway from the study he links to is that "the poverty rate in New York City actually fell between 2019 and 2020" as a result of COVID relief. Nationally, the poverty rate in 2019 for Asian Americans appears to have been a tad less than half that of African Americans.
I would also note that the linked article refers only to violent crime, whereas you initially referred to crime rates in general. Poverty might well be a better predictor the propensity to commit property crimes, for example. As the article you linked to notes, "A major reason is that crimes of violence are usually motivated by quarrels, personal grudges, perceived insults, and similar interpersonal conflicts, not by economic necessity."
And, of course, to really figure out the effect, if any, of poverty on propensity to commit crimes, you have to control for all sorts of factors, including [immigrant status](Immigrant Assimilation and Crime: Generational Differences in Youth Violence in Chicago), an obvious confounder if you are looking at ethnic groups in NYC ("API individuals in NYC are much more likely to be foreign-born than other racial groups. In 2019, there were 71 percent foreign-born API immigrants in the City compared to Hispanics (39 percent), Black (32 percent) and White (22 percent) immigrants. Overall, 36 percent of the City’s population is foreign-born."
So, while your friend is obviously wrong to say that poverty is a sufficient cause of crime, figuring out the extent to which poverty (or anything else) does or does not contribute to the propensity to commit crimes is a daunting task.
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