On Thu, Sep 13, 2007 at 09:06:06AM +0530, shiv sastry wrote: > Using the correlation "relative poverty==tendency to criminal behavior" and
that's the wrong correlation (or at least not the one i made): the likelihood of criminal behaviour is proportional to the ratio of the opportunity from crime to the opportunity from "honest" work. if relative poverty also means relatively low access to things to steal, than relative poverty is not in itself correlated in any way to a tendency to criminal behaviour. indeed, if access to things to steal rises faster than wealth, than relative _wealth_ would be more correlated to a tendency to criminal behaviour. in the public sector, at least, the latter is true, so the more well paid are probably _more_ likely to be corrupt since however well paid, they have access to even _more_ things to steal. -rishab
