https://doi.org/10.1177/2329496519836075 Social Currents 1–18 © The Southern Sociological Society 2019 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/2329496519836075 journals.sagepub.com/home/scu Original Article Evidence of political and economic divisive- ness in the United States has grown. Rising inequality and gaps in achievement, wages, and income are well documented (Deaton 2013; Piketty and Saez 2003), especially if one exam- ines educational outcomes among children (Mayer 2001; L. McCall 2000) or differences across race and ethnic groups (Iceland 2004; Tienda 1989). While substantial progress was made in the 1950s and 1960s to reduce inequal- ity in education, health, and earnings (Piketty and Saez 2003), trends shifted away from upward mobility starting in the 1970s. Adding to that, the economy is an increasingly bifurcated reality, with low-income families 836075SCU XX X 10.1177/2329496519836075Social CurrentsDollar et al. research-article 2019 1 University of North Carolina at Greensboro, USA 2 University of Delaware, Newark, USA Corresponding Author: Cindy Brooks Dollar, Department of Sociology, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 337 Frank Porter Graham Building, P.O. Box 26170, Greensboro, NC 27402-6170, USA. Email: cbdollar@uncg.edu Joblessness, Poverty, and Neighborhood Crime: Testing Wilson’s Assertions of Jobless Poverty Cindy Brooks Dollar 1 , Ellen A. Donnelly 2 , and Karen F. Parker 2 Abstract Political and public rhetoric often tout the detrimental effects of poverty and the stabilizing effects of jobs when discussing issues of crime and disorder. Several decades ago, William Julius Wilson proposed that while poverty has been a long-standing problem across U.S. cities, a “new urban poverty” associated with the massive disappearance of jobs may better explain neighborhood crime and violence. Although scholarship continues to theorize about the unique criminogenic effects of area-level poverty and joblessness, criminological research has not systematically examined the distinct effects of poverty and jobless poverty on neighborhood crime. In the present analysis, we use data from the National Neighborhood Crime Study (NNCS) to provide the first empirical investigation of how joblessness, separately from poverty, influences rates of homicide and other reported violence across 6,406 neighborhoods in 53 U.S. metropolitan areas. A spatially adjusted, multilevel regression analysis reveals that places with poverty and joblessness are distinct from areas with poverty and no marked joblessness. Analysis by neighborhood further reveals that joblessness has a stronger effect on violent crime than poverty itself in severely impoverished areas. As such, we find support for Wilson’s distinct, criminogenic notion of jobless poverty. Keywords joblessness, poverty, jobless poverty, neighborhood crime, homicide