It's all relative: assessing prominent explanations for U.S. homicide trends

A substantial body of research has accumulated over the past quarter century to explain recent fluctuations in U.S. homicide rates, and a number of plausible explanations have been offered. This dissertation research sought to assess the relative strength of the most “common” of these explanations, including changes in the economy, family structure, age structure, immigration, policing, corrections, drug markets, and guns. In addition to assessing the relative strength of these explanations, special emphasis was placed on the impact of methodological variation, including variable operationalization, unit of analysis, and time period covered, on the results. Meta-analytic techniques were used to quantitatively synthesize 5,082 effect sizes from 145 different studies examining the relationship between these and other possible explanations and post-WWII U.S. homicide trends published between 1990 and 2016. Results revealed strong support for the role of changes in single parent households, inflation, consumer sentiment, military involvement, racial heterogeneity, disadvantage, incarceration, gun prevalence, racial and gender inequality, felony arrest, and divorce/family disorganization. These results indicate that many of the most “common” explanations are not receiving strong empirical support (e.g., police force size, unemployment, drug markets, gun laws) and suggest other possible explanations for future research to pursue that have not received as much attention in the scholarly literature (e.g., racial heterogeneity, military involvement, alcohol consumption). For many of the explanations examined, the amount of empirical support was conditioned on methodology. The implications of these findings for research, policy, and theory are discussed.

Grantor dc:publisher

University of Delaware

Year dc:date.issued

2018

Author dc:creator

• Mancik, Ashley M.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.58088/zw26-9m29

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:udspace.udel.edu:19716/24146