Description: Criminologists have known for decades that income inequality is the best predictor of the local homicide rate, but why this is so has eluded them
Brief description:
Martin Daly is professor emeritus of psychology, neuroscience and behavior at McMaster University. He has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and has received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Human Behavior & Evolution Society.
Review Quotes:
"Martin Daly is one of the world's great experts on violence. With over thirty-five years of research behind him, he guides us through the controversies and shows that inequality really is the most important reason why some societies are plagued by violence while others are almost free of it. If you want to understand the evidence, he can't be bettered."
--Richard Wilkinson, author of The Spirit Level, and co-founder of The Equality Trust
"How come confrontations in one population, but not in another, so readily escalate into murder? Martin Daly makes a compelling case that what matters most is the degree to which the goods men most desire are unequally distributed. More importantly, Daly explains why. Killing the Competition provides a broadly-researched, carefully-reasoned explanation for why inequity matters--not just in theory, but in the worlds people actually inhabit."
--Sarah B. Hrdy, author of Mother Nature and Mothers and Others: The evolutionary origins of mutual understanding