The Trend in Violence is Down

In the decade of Darfur and Iraq, and shortly after the century of Stalin, Hitler, and Mao, the claim that violence has been diminishing may seem somewhere between hallucinatory and obscene. Yet recent studies that seek to quantify the historical ebb and flow of violence point to exactly that conclusion.

I was shocked to read this introduction to a piece on Edge.org by Steven Pinker, “A History of Violence” Http://edge.org/3rd_culture/pinker07/pinker07_index.html. After many of the violent events in the United States and around the world in the last few months, you would think that the world has plunged into a darker era of inhumanity; however, from a longer-term view violence is down. We may be suffering from the recency bias. We may be wrongly extrapolating current events to form broad generalization.

Steven Pinker, better know for his work on the mind and language, has always been insightful and this presentation is no exception. He is able to take complex subjects and find clarity and what is relevant. Violence will have ebbs and flows, but the general direction has been toward a decline.

Pinker provides a number of theories for this decline, but one that seems appealing from the vantage of an economist is the value of life. When life is not cheap, there is less willingness to destroy it. When there is value from specialization, violence is costly. As economic progress has increased, we have seen a decline in violence. The places where violence has often erupted are where there has been more economic upheaval or where the prospects to see improvement in life have diminished.

A core objective in economic development should be to further spread the gains of trade especially to those areas which have the poorest prospects for life. This may have the further benefit of containing violence.