Your Money and Your Life

I superimposed a map of homicides (denoted by pins) in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area so far in 2018 (source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Interactive) with a map of the 2016 median household income in the area (source: city-data.com).  The city limits are outlined in red.  As of this writing, there have been 75 homicides this year in the Pittsburgh area.

Click on the map to view a larger version in a new tab.

Median household income in the yellow areas is $100,000.  In the medium-to-dark-green areas, it is $150,000 or more.  In the medium-to-dark-orange areas, it is $50,000 and less.

It may not be news that poorer communities have higher homicide rates* but Pittsburgh’s intermingling of poor and affluent neighborhoods illustrates this pretty vividly.

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* As the Bureau of Justice Statistics reported in 2014: “Persons in poor households at or below the federal poverty level … had more than double the rate of violent victimization as persons in high-income households. … The overall pattern of poor persons having the highest rates of violent victimization was consistent for both whites and blacks.”
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