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Document Type

Article

Abstract

While terrorism has been a constant product of society, its determinants have been sporadic at best and inconclusive at worst. With the scientific community failing to arrive at a common consensus in reference to poverty as defined by GDP per capita, I hope to find a concrete conclusion by taking a different approach and examining the relationship between poverty rate and terrorism. In order to define the impact of poverty rate on terrorism, I utilized the Quality of Government Index Standard Time Series Dataset and the Global Terrorism Database. Further analysis was conducted by performing an OLS regression on the data via the negative binomial regression and Prais-Winsten models. This study deviates from the general consensus on poverty and terror by concluding that a negative relationship exists between poverty rate and terrorism; although, it does not retain significance when more impactful variables are compared. The findings suggest GDP per capita, state fragility, unemployment rate, and linguistic fractionalization as alternative, significant, determinants of terror. Of these, the most intriguing relationship exists between GDP and terrorism. In the presence of increased security measures after 2005, a positive relationship forms and alludes to wealthier countries being more susceptible to terror attacks despite funding counter measures. This provides an explanation to the increase in terrorism seen in the early 21st century, while suggesting that poverty rate exerts influence over terrorism rates. However, when the additional security precautions are considered, state fragility or unemployment overshadow poverty rate as variables of significance.

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