Costa Rica's homicide rate is 17 per 100,000 people. You probably won't notice it living in whatever expatriate enclave you and your wife are looking at, but that's a crushing burden on the average person in the country.
Costa Rica’s 17 in 100k is ~2.5 times bigger than the US’ 6 in 100k people killed by homicide.
Thanks to gun crime, the US’ homicide rates are at least 7x the rest of the first world, anglophone, countries where rates are sub 1 in 100k.
By that measure it is 2-3x more confronting, to move from the United Kingdom to the States than it is from the US to Costa Rica.
Except it's not "thanks to gun crime." Some of the states with the lowest homicide rates, like Idaho and Utah, have the most guns.
This is why it’s misleading to talk about state-level stats without accounting for density: Idaho has a lower crime rate because it is mostly rural and has a single large city, which isn’t that big. Crime is a function of population, not land.
Don't you mean function of density or was that a slight of hand rather than a typo? Like compare Wyoming to 1/16 of NYC or 16x Wyoming and compare it to all of NYC. They're about equal in population but the rates per capita are per capita so they're unchanged whether you multiply one or divide the other.
You certainly have things like rural gangs, too, but if things are spread out you just don't have that critical mass to ramp the numbers up. This also plays out in other types of crimes – cars get stolen anywhere there are cars, but thieves are playing the odds and it's easier not to attract in a dense population while they'd stick out if they started going up some stranger's driveway in a place where there's no other traffic. When that Kia lock exploit was in the news, there were bored teenagers basically treating street parking as a shopping mall because the supply was huge and until they actually touched a car there was no crime in walking down a sidewalk.
The comparative lack of people in Idaho is accurately accounted for in its crime rate.
Are you suggesting that density causes crime? Some of the world's most densely populated cities don't have anywhere near the crime rate of American cities, which aren't all that densely packed by world standards.
Crime rates are reported per 100,000 people, so population isn’t the reason.
While crime rates are per 100,000 people, population density makes a big difference because a low density, homogeneous population is going to have fewer interactions which turn negative. That's why people comparing crime stats usually compare cities or regions to avoid falsely reporting a correlation which is nothing more than a function of urban vs. rural density.
The same way a surveillance camera in every room would also reduce bad behavior...
If they're not, nothing will happen.
Retirement is a long way away. But next year, we have an Airbnb in Escazu, a suburb of San Jose that is safe. It’s a high rise condo 2/2 with a gym and a pool.
The murder rate in “Atlanta” is also still around 20 per 100,000 and I lived in various suburbs of metro Atlanta until 2022 and was never in fear of my life going into the city. But I also lived in a suburban enclaves there.
For what it’s worth, I’m not going to be one of these ignorant entitled Americans who refuse to learn Spanish. I am close to A2 level Spanish now and should be there by the time we go next year. I can hold simple conversations.