Exploring the association between income inequality, racial composition, and fatal police shootings in U.S. counties (2015–2022)

Abstract

The study determines whether income inequality and racial composition of counties influence the number of residents who have been fatally shot by police.

Mapping Police Violence and the Washington Post between 2015 and 2022 were used, including 7082 cases across 3126 counties. This data was linked with the American Community Survey. This county level analysis investigated the association between police shootings and counties' Gini Coefficient, a well-known index to measure income inequality range from 0 to 1. The negative binomial regression models (NBRG) were used controlling for demographic factors, population density, number of police officer per-capita, ratio of violent crimes, percentage of female officers and state and year fixed effects.

Moving from low to high-GC was associated with higher fatal police shootings, with 2.3× for Whites, 7.6× for Blacks, 7.8× for Hispanics, and 2.1× for other groups, and 3.6× overall increase. One unit increase in GC number of police fatal shooting was associated with a marginal effect of 3.496 (CI: 2.207–4.781), with a higher marginal effect in Black (1.032, CI: 0.504–1.562), and White (0.510, CI: 0.191–0.829) peoples.

The study emphasizes the need for comprehensive solutions to address income inequality and racial composition in addressing fatal police shootings.