Safer in Cities?

In an article in The Atlantic, “You're More Likely to Die a Violent Death in Rural America Than in a City,” author Emily Badger explains why the title may be true based on the recently published study, “Safety in Numbers: Are Major Cities the Safest Places in the United States?” published in the Annals of Emergency Medicine.

The study looked at every injury death in America between 1999 and 2006, excluding death by terrorism from the National Center for Health Statistics. That number totaled 1,295,919 deaths which were tagged with the county where the injury took place, with counties classified on a 10-step continuum from urban to rural. The main findings of the study says is urban areas are significantly safer than rural areas, when looking at all means of death due to injury with the top three causes of death being motor vehicle crashes, firearm use or accident, and poisoning.

Maps from "Safety in Numbers: Are Major Cities the Safest Places in the United States?" by S. Myers et al. in Annals of Emergency Medicine

Violent Child Abuse On the Decline

A special report from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics finds that during 2010 roughly 2.8 million “children age 17 or younger… lived in a household in which at least one member age 12 or older experienced one or more nonfatal violent victimizations during the year.”  The data does not specify whether the child was present during the abuse or whether he was the victim of the attack, but it does provide insight into how diminished, yet still widespread, the issue violent crime against children is.  In 2010, 3.9% of children fell into the category of having lived in a household where violent child abuse took place, but this percentage has fallen over 68% since 1993, when approximately 8.7 million children, or 12.6%, lived in a household that experienced violent victimization.  Violent crimes occurred in low-income households (less than $15,000 a year) and in urban areas.  Additionally, households headed by one parent or a nonmarried adult were more prone to experiencing violent child victimization.

Income Inequality a Growing Problem in Urban China

A study recently featured in the Journal of Comparative Economics examines income inequality in urban China. Capital income increased during the late 1980s and continued to rise until 2009. The researchers found that the share of capital income between classes was grossly unequal. For urban residents, capital income accounted for less than 2% of their total income. In contrast, for the top 1% in China, capital income accounted for more than 30% of their total income. Additionally, the share of capital income for the top 1% is increasing rapidly. In 1988, capital income only made up 10% of the top earners income, but in 2007 this figure increased to 37%. The researchers also examined the influence of capital income on income inequality by analyzing the Gini coefficient for the eastern, central, and western regions of China. Although there appeared to be no statistically significant difference between the central and western regions, the Gini coefficient was higher in the eastern region, indicating that the eastern region has more extensive income inequality.

For First Time, China's Urban Residents Outnumber Rural

The Economist's daily chart focuses on the movement of China's people into urban areas. At the end of 2011, and according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, 1.35 billion, or 51.3 percent of China's residents lived in cities, meaning that for the first time the country's "city-dwellers now outnumber its rural residents." According to The Economist, as recently as "1980 less than a fifth of China’s population lived in cities, a smaller proportion than in India."

In the ten years that followed, the Chinese government "remained wary of free movement, even as it made its peace with free enterprise." It "sought industrialisation without urbanisation," only to ultimately realize that "it could not have one without the other." And although the percentage of city-dwellers is on the rise, it seems that the Chinese government's wariness toward urban development has slowed the movement of its citizens to cities. The Economist notes, "Even now, its ratio of city-dwellers is, if anything, low for an economy at its stage of development."