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There is no way that any factor is sufficient to explain any phenomenon that involves human behavior.
I don't think that is particularly helpful, because it defines "poverty" as "below the official poverty line plus adjustments," which is actually pretty high. What about more extreme poverty? If you look at the Census Bureau income spreadsheet here, it says that, at the national level, the pct of Asian American household with income under 15,000 in 2019 was 6.3% versus 17% for "Black only." Similarly, according to the chart on page 4 here, in 2018 the pct of 9-yr-olds in deep poverty (1/2 of the official poverty line) nationally was 3 percent for Asian Americans and 18 percent for African Americans.
Moreover, the data he uses includes COVID relief -- in fact, the key takeaway from the study he links to is that "the poverty rate in New York City actually fell between 2019 and 2020" as a result of COVID relief. Nationally, the poverty rate in 2019 for Asian Americans appears to have been a tad less than half that of African Americans.
I would also note that the linked article refers only to violent crime, whereas you initially referred to crime rates in general. Poverty might well be a better predictor the propensity to commit property crimes, for example. As the article you linked to notes, "A major reason is that crimes of violence are usually motivated by quarrels, personal grudges, perceived insults, and similar interpersonal conflicts, not by economic necessity."
And, of course, to really figure out the effect, if any, of poverty on propensity to commit crimes, you have to control for all sorts of factors, including [immigrant status](Immigrant Assimilation and Crime: Generational Differences in Youth Violence in Chicago), an obvious confounder if you are looking at ethnic groups in NYC ("API individuals in NYC are much more likely to be foreign-born than other racial groups. In 2019, there were 71 percent foreign-born API immigrants in the City compared to Hispanics (39 percent), Black (32 percent) and White (22 percent) immigrants. Overall, 36 percent of the City’s population is foreign-born."
So, while your friend is obviously wrong to say that poverty is a sufficient cause of crime, figuring out the extent to which poverty (or anything else) does or does not contribute to the propensity to commit crimes is a daunting task.
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