While the disparity in homicide rates among the wealthy and poor is indeed remarkable, homicide claims relatively few lives. From 2004 through 2008, just over 4 percent of deaths in the five poorest neighborhoods were due to homicide. That’s a much higher proportion than in the five least-poor neighborhoods, where about one-third of 1 percent of deaths were due to homicide. In the poorest neighborhoods, many more deaths were due to cancer (22 percent) and heart disease (15 percent) than to homicide. So the economic and racial disparities in nonviolent causes of death, especially cancer and heart disease, merit close attention—more attention than they’ve been receiving.
But there’s another way to look at the toll of a high homicide rate on a community. The vast majority of homicide victims are ages 15 to 34, while heart disease and stroke fatalities tend to be much older. Homicide, in other words, robs more years of life than the standard mortality rates indicate.
A measure called Years of Potential Life Lost factors in the prematurity of deaths like homicide—and shows more compellingly the disparate impact of homicide on Chicago’s poor black neighborhoods. In Chicago as in most places, a base age of 75 is used in calculating YPLL. A death at age 70 is five years of potential life lost; a death at age 25 is 50 YPLL.
In the five poorest neighborhoods, the YPLL rate for homicide was 2,172. That is, for every 100,000 residents, 2,172 years of potential life were lost each year to homicide. In the five least-poor neighborhoods, the YPLL rate for homicide was just 186.
In the poor neighborhoods, only cancer takes more potential years of life.
YPLL is a mere statistical tool, but it’s also a measure of the punishment many Chicagoans have been absorbing for the crime of being poor and black. Annually, the five poorest neighborhoods lost more than two and a half times as many years of potential life as their wealthier counterparts.
The correlation between race and YPLL is pronounced. Here are the ten community areas with the worst YPLL rates, and their percentages of African-American residents:
- Englewood—99
- Fuller Park—97
- Washington Park—99
- West Garfield Park—96
- Greater Grand Crossing—98
- West Englewood—97
- East Garfield Park—93
- North Lawndale—91
- South Shore—95
- West Pullman—94