Structural Covariates of Homicide Rates: Are There Any Invariances Across Time and Social Space?

Abstract

This study demonstrates that the empirical literature on the structural covariates of homicide rates contains inconsistent findings across different time periods and different geographical units. This apparent variance of findings may be due to statistical or methodological artifacts of particular studies, such as different time periods covered, units of analysis, samples, model specifications, and problems of statistical analysis and inference. A baseline regression model using 11 structural covariates is estimated for cities, metropolitan areas, and states in 1960, 1970, and 1980. The empirical estimates of this model exhibit instability because of high levels of collinearity among several regressors. Principal components analysis is applied to simplify the dimensionality of the structural covariate space. Reestimation of the regression model then indicates that the apparent inconsistencies across time and social space are greatly reduced. The theoretical significance of the findings for substantive theories of violent crime are discussed. The past two decades have seen an upsurge in the number of empirical studies that address the question of why some cities, metropolitan areas, ' The research reported here was supported, in part, by National Science Foundation grant SES-8800595. We are grateful to five anonymous A J S referees for stimulating and useful comments on an earlier version of this paper. Requests for reprints should be sent to

Determinantes da criminalidade em Minas Gerais

“…Vários estudos quantitativos (Bayley, 1984;Blau e Blau, 1982;Land et al, 1990;Schuerman e Kobrin, 1986) (Land et al, 1990) 1982;Merton, 1968) e a privação absoluta (Messner, 1980 (Parker, 1989). De qualquer maneira, resta a convicção firmada em muitos desses estudos de que existe uma interação estreita, embora não causal, entre a criminalidade violenta e as condições socioeconômicas.…”

Violence, Teenage Pregnancy, and Life History

“…Demographic studies note the strong correlation between divorce rates and aggression (Blau & Blau, 1982;Land, McCall, & Cohen, 1990). The likelihood of homicide victimization increases with the percentage of female-headed households within a locality (Dobrin, Lee, & Price, 2005).…”

“…The number of people aged 15 to 29 in large metropolitan areas is predictive of homicide rates (Land, McCall & Cohen, 1990). The age-crime curve is usually attributed to the fact that younger people have fewer resources despite being at their physical reproductive peak (Moffitt, 1993).…”

“…Relationships between age structure and reproduction are less clear. Research suggests that population density has no effect on teenage pregnancy and live birth rates (Barbieri, 2004;Gawryszewski & Costa, 2005), although the opposite is true for aggression (Land et al, 1990). If the logic of the age-crime effect were applied to sexual activity, higher concentrations of youths would be expected to increase early reproduction rates.…”

Area‐Based Socioeconomic Characteristics of Industries at High Risk for Violence in the Workplace

“…The domains included population structure, population composition, educational attainment, employment, residential mobility, family disruption, income and poverty, wealth, crowding, and basic amenities (Table 2). These census-derived variables were selected a priori, based on the published literature (Land et al 1990;Pridemore 2002;Sampson et al 2002) regarding social processes and crime, and in accordance with hypothesized associations with workplace violence potential.…”