The hypothesis that inequality causes violence is investigated empirically in the context of killings by Nepalese Maoists in their ongoing People’s War against their government. Inequality is measured by the Gini index as well as polarization indices. The dependent variable is thenumber of people killed by Maoist rebels during 1996-2003 in each Nepalese village. We findstrong evidence that greater inequality escalates deadly violence. We also find that the presence of social networks and government welfare programs may reduce the violence, and that the level of income, while unrelated to conflict, mitigates the effects of inequality on conflict. Theinequality variables themselves have distinct effects, with polarization appearing to be the more resilient type of inequality causing conflict.