More violence, less development: a preliminary assessment of armed violence and MDG achievement

Abstract

This report presents an exploratory statistical assessment of the relationships between armed violence and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). It finds that poverty does not make a country more or less dangerous. Nevertheless, it finds that countries registering lower levels of human development and higher levels of income inequality experience proportionately higher levels of homicidal violence. The lower the level of human development and the wider the levels of income inequality, the higher the level of violence measured.