Figure 22. Income Inequality and Homicides in 138 Countries, 2008
Sources: Authors’ calculations using Solt (2009) and United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (2008)
5.C. Generates political instability
Given the predominance of health and social ills across more
unequal societies, there is little surprise that inequality is also
strongly associated with political instability. While the sources of
political conflict vary from country to country, conflict generally
originates from severe social grievances, including class conflict and
the perception of inequality among ethnic, religious or other
groups. Using one of the six dimensions included in the Worldwide
Governance Indicators (WGI) project (Kaufmann et al. 2010), we
find that unequal societies, in general, are much more prone to
political instability, or, in other words, to be destabilized or
overthrown by unconstitutional or forceful means, which includes
politically‐motivated violence and terrorism (ρ = -0.33) (Figure 23).