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January 18, 2007
How safe are U.S. states relative to other countries?
If you're an American citizen looking to travel outside the U.S., the U.S. State Department advises you to check its travel bulletin about countries that may pose a threat to you. Violence, political instability, infectious diseases and a whole bunch of other causes can lead to a country ending up in the State Department's watchlist.
What about security and safety within the U.S. though? The U.S. has the highest rates of poverty and other high-risk factors for crime among developed economies. While idly browsing NationMaster and StateMaster, I thought of eyeballing per-capita homicide rates in U.S. states and comparing them with per-capita homicide rates around the world (the per-capita homicide rate, in this case, acts as a very rough proxy for 'safety', a very subjective term).
Each state above is labeled with the country that most closely matches its per-capita homicide rate. If you are from California, you can figure that you have just as big a chance, give or take a few percent, of getting murdered in Zambia as at home. Likewise with Texas and Poland.
The states are also colored along a gradient. In other words, if you are from India, you are safer at home than in Louisiana, Nevada, New Mexico and other states colored darker than Colorado, Rhode Island and New Jersey. Or maybe you'll get the sobering realization that Wyoming is only as safe as Azerbaijan. Louisiana led the nation in per-capita homicides in 2002, a number that comes close to Mexico's per-capita homicide rate per 10,000 people. The lowest per-capita homicide rate was recorded in North Dakota, whose numbers come close to those of Greece.
Only five countries in the above list are more dangerous than the entire United States: Colombia, South Africa, Jamaica, Venezuela and Russia. Countries safer than the entire United States included Hong Kong, Japan, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Interestingly, Saudi Arabia appears on the current State Department warning list.
There are lies, damn lies and statistics, but let's occasionally let the numbers speak for themselves!
Posted by Vishy at January 18, 2007 12:04 AM