STRUCTURAL INEQUALITY AND HOMICIDE: AN ASSESSMENT OF THE BLACK‐WHITE GAP IN KILLINGS*

This paper examines the relationship between race and violent crime by directly modeling the racial gap in homicide offending for large central cities for 1990. We evaluate the role of black‐white differences in aspects of both disadvantage and resources in explaining which places have wider racial disparities in lethal violence. The results show that where residential segregation is higher, and where whites' levels of homeownership, median income, college graduation, and professional workers exceed those for blacks to a greater degree, African Americans have much higher levels of homicide offending than whites. Based on these results, we conclude that the racial homicide gap is better explained by the greater resources that exist among whites than by the higher levels of disadvantage among blacks.     

ECONOMIC INEQUALITY AND LEVELS OF HOMICIDE: AN ANALYSIS OF URBAN NEIGHBORHOODS*

This paper presents an analysis of the relationship between levels of economic inequality and homicide rates for a sample of 26 neighborhoods in Manhattan, New York. It argues that neighborhoods are more appropriate units of analysis for studying inequality and homicide than are larger political and statistical units because neighborhoods are more likely to constitute meaningful frames of reference for social comparisons. The principle hypothesis is that a high degree of economic inequality in a neighborhood will give rise to high levels of relative deprivation and high rates of homicide. The results of a series of multiple regression analyses fail to support this hypothesis. The measure of economic inequality is weakly associated with the observed homicide rates. Similarly, the racial composition of Manhattan neighborhoods exhibits no significant association with levels of homicide, given statistical controls for other sociodemographic variables. Two neighborhood characteristics do emerge as significant predictors of homicide rates: the relative size of the poverty population and the percent divorced or separated. Homicide rates tend to be highest in those neighborhoods characterized by extreme poverty and pervasive marital dissolution.     

POPULATION DIVERSITY AND CROSS-NATIONAL HOMICIDE: THE EFFECTS OF INEQUALITY AND HETEROGENEITY*

This study examines the impact of income inequality and ethnic heterogeneity on homicide rates for a sample of 32 nations. The results of the analyses indicate that vertical social direrentiation, as measured by income inequality, and horizontal differentiation, as indexed by ethnic heterogeneity, have signijicant main effects on cross-national homicide. Additionally, evidence is presented suggesting an interaction effect on inequaliry and heterogeneity on homicide. It appears that increased ethnic heterogeneity exacerbates the impact of income inequality on homicide rates.     

STRUCTURAL CONDITIONS AND RACIAL HOMICIDE PATTERNS: A LOOK AT THE MULTIPLE DISADVANTAGES IN URBAN AREAS*

This research examines the differential effects of structural conditions on race-specific victim and offender homicide rates in large U.S. cities in 1990. While structural theories of race relations and criminological explanations are reviewed, particular attention is given to those structural theories that highlight racial competition, economic and labor market opportunity, and racial segregation as essential for an examination of racially disaggregated homicide offending. The effects of these and other structural conditions are estimated for four racially distinct homicide offending models—black intraracial, white intraracial, black interracial, and white interracial homicides. The results suggest that the structural conditions that lead to race-specific victim and offender homicide rates differ significantly among the four models. Economic deprivation and local opportunity structures are found to influence significantly the rates of intraracial homicide offending, while racial inequality contributes solely to black interracial homicide rates. In addition, our findings indicate that blacks and whites face different economic and social realities related to economic deprivation and social isolation. The differential impact of these structural conditions and other labor market factors are discussed.     

STRUCTURAL COVARIATES OF U.S. COUNTY HOMICIDE RATES: INCORPORATING SPATIAL EFFECTS*

Spatial analysis is statistically and substantively important for macrolevel criminological inquiry. Using county‐level data for the decennial years in the 1960 to 1990 time period, we reexamine the impact of conventional structural covariates on homicide rates and explicitly model spatial effects. Important findings are: (1) homicide is strongly clustered in space; (2) this clustering cannot be completely explained by common measures of the structural similarity of neighboring counties; (3) noteworthy regional differences are observed in the effects of structural covariates on homicide rates; and (4) evidence consistent with a diffusion process for homicide is observed in the South throughout the 1960–1990 period.     

INCOME INEQUALITY AND HOMICIDE RATES: CROSS-NATIONAL DATA AND CRIMINOLOGICAL THEORIES

Previous studies have identified but failed to explain satisfactorily the positive relationship between income inequality and homicide rates. This paper proposes an explanation based on the concept of relative deprivation, but also reviews the criminological literature in a search for other theoretically relevant variables. After assessing problems of sampling and measurement, and using a considerably larger sample than used in previous studies, multiple regression analyses reveal positive net effects of both inequality and population growth (reflecting a higher proportion of young people) on homicide rates. Further analyses show that the effects of inequality on homicide are more pronounced in more democratic nations, a finding supporting the relative deprivation explanation. Income inequality also has stronger effects in more densely populated countries, in wealthier nations, and in countries with larger internal security forces.     

AN ERRORS-IN-VARIABLE MODEL OF THE EFFECT OF POVERTY ON URBAN HOMICIDE RATES

Inconsistent findings on the relationship between poverty and violent crime have led some authors to question the presence of a structural relationship. There is reason, however, to believe that many of the existing estimates are biased because measures of poverty contain errors which are confounded with disturbances in the estimated models. In this paper we specify and estimate a model which accommodates the measurement error and provides an instrumental variable estimate of the effects of poverty on homicide rates in the 49 largest cities in the U.S. Compared to similar OLS estimates, the instrumental variable estimates are much larger and fit a model in which poverty increases the homicide rate. The results are similar when homicides are divided into four types: family homicides, other primary homicides, robbery homicides, and other-felony homicides     

STRUCTURAL FACTORS AND BLACK INTERRACIAL HOMICIDE: A NEW EXAMINATION OF THE CAUSAL PROCESS*

This study evaluates the assumption that deprivation among African Americans and racial inequality lead to black interracial homicide due to racial conflict and antagonism. Using refined race‐adjusted Supplemental Homicide Report data, Uniform Crime Report data and census data, we test an alternative hypothesis that draws on the macrostructural opportunity theory to assess and more accurately specify the relationship between structural characteristics and black interracial homicide. We find that first, the relationship between economic factors and black interracial homicide can be explained in large part by high rates of financially motivated crime such as robbery, and second, that economic factors are associated with financially motivated but not expressive black interracial killings. Analyses of black intraracial killings are performed for comparison purposes. Collectively, the findings suggest that conflict‐based explanations rooted in racial antagonism and frustration aggression may be premature.     

POVERTY,INFANT MORTALITY,AND HOMICIDE RATES IN CROSS-NATIONAL PERSPECTIVE: ASSESSMENTS OF CRITERION AND CONSTRUCT VALIDITY*

This article assesses the extent to which the infant mortality rate might be treated as a “proxy” for poverty in research on cross-national variation in homicide rates. We have assembled a pooled, cross-sectional time-series data set for 16 advanced nations from the 1993–2000 period that includes standard measures of infant mortality and homicide and contains information on the following commonly used “income-based” poverty measures: a measure intended to reflect “absolute” deprivation and a measure intended to reflect “relative” deprivation. With these data, we assess the criterion validity of the infant mortality rate with reference to the two income-based poverty measures. Also, we estimate the effects of the various indicators of disadvantage on homicide rates in regression models, thereby assessing construct validity. The results reveal that the infant mortality rate is correlated more strongly with “relative poverty” than with “absolute poverty,” although much unexplained variance remains. In the regression models shown here, the measure of infant mortality and the relative poverty measure yield significant positive effects on homicide rates, whereas the absolute poverty measure does not exhibit any significant effects. The results of our analyses suggest that it would be premature to dismiss relative deprivation in cross-national research on homicide, and that disadvantage is conceptualized and measured best as a multidimensional construct.     

HOMICIDE,STRUCTURAL FACTORS,AND THE RACIAL INVARIANCE ASSUMPTION*

Structural theories in criminology generally assume that the effects of structural conditions on homicide are the same for all race-groups. However, previous homicide research testing this assumption contains methodological shortcomings and has produced inconsistent findings. Therefore, the validity of the “racial invariance assumption” remains highly questionable. Using 1990 data for 125 U.S. cities, this study addresses some of the limitations of previous research in an effort to provide a more definitive examination of race differences in the effects of important structural factors on homicide rates. Contrary to the expectations of the structural perspective, the results from this study reveal substantial and statistically significant race differences. Specifically, the associations between homicide and several measures of socio-economic deprivation (e.g., poverty, unemployment, income inequality, female-headed households, deprivation index) are found to be stronger among whites than blacks. A primary implication of these results is that the current versions of many structural theories need revision in order to account for observed race differences in the effects of structural factors and to explain fully the black-white gap in homicide rates.     

THE IMPACT OF OUT-OF-STATE PRISON POPULATION ON STATE HOMICIDE RATES: DISPLACEMENT AND FREE-RIDER EFFECTS*

Past studies of the impact of prison population on homicide rates have produced widely divergent results. Those using state-level data find small impacts, but those using national data find very large ones. We use displacement/free-rider theory to explore the difference between these results. Displacement, in the current context, refers to a criminal's movement away from states with higher imprisonment rates. Free riding occurs when a state benefits from criminals being incarcerated in other states. If the displacement effect holds, a state's prison population has a stronger impact on crime within the state than would be accomplished by deterrence and incapacitation alone. If the free-rider effect holds, higher prison populations outside the state reduce homicide in the state because criminals are incapacitated elsewhere. Using vital statistics data for 1929 to 1992, we conduct separate homicide regressions for each state using both in-state and out-of-state prison population as independent variables. We find that the out-of-state variable has a much larger (negative) association with homicide, indicating substantial free riding. We also find evidence of a small displacement impact.     

RACIAL INEQUALITY AND RACIALLY DISAGGREGATED HOMICIDE RATES: AN ASSESSMENT OF ALTERNATIVE THEORETICAL EXPLANATIONS*

This research considers the relationship between levels of racial inequality and homicide rates for a sample of 154 U.S. cities. We identfy four causal processes that have been cited in the theoretical literature to explain the link between racial inequality and criminal violence. These diflerent causal explanations imply distinctive relationships between racial inequality and different types of homicide rates disaggregated by the racial characteristics of victims and offenders. Accordingly, we examine the effects of racial inequality on racially disaggregated homicide rates, as well as on total rates. We also introduce factor scales to alleviate the common problem of multicollinearity. Our results reveal significant, positive coefficients for racial inequality in equations predicting total homicide rates and race-specific offending rates. These results offer greatest support for theoretical arguments emphasizing a generalized effect of racial inequality on the offending behavior of residents of metropolitan communities.     

INEQUALITY,WELFARE STATE,AND HOMICIDE: FURTHER SUPPORT FOR THE INSTITUTIONAL ANOMIE THEORY*

Building directly on key insights from two prior tests of the institutional anomie theory, we predict that the positive effect of economic inequality on the level of lethal violence is limited to nations characterized by relatively weak collective institutions of social protection. This hypothesis is tested with two complementary cross‐national data sets. Both settings reveal a negative interaction effect between economic inequality and the strength of the welfare state. Nations that protect their citizens from the vicissitudes of market forces appear to be immune to the homicidal effects of economic inequality. This finding provides critical support for the institutional anomie theory.     

NEIGHBORHOOD INEQUALITY,COLLECTIVE EFFICACY,AND THE SPATIAL DYNAMICS OF URBAN VIOLENCE*

Highlighting resource inequality, social processes, and spatial interdependence, this study combines structural characteristics from the 1990 census with a survey of 8,872 Chicago residents in 1995 to predict homicide variations in 1996–1998 across 343 neighborhoods. Spatial proximity to homicide is strongly related to increased homicide rates, adjusting for internal neighborhood characteristics and prior homicide. Concentrated disadvantage and low collective efficacy—defined as the linkage of social control and cohesion—also independently predict increased homicide. Local organizations, voluntary associations, and friend/kinship networks appear to be important only insofar as they promote the collective efficacy of residents in achieving social control and cohesion. Spatial dynamics coupled with neighborhood inequalities in social and economic capacity are therefore consequential for explaining urban violence.     

DISENTANGLING THE EFFECTS OF GENDER AND INTIMACY ON VICTIM PRECIPITATION IN HOMICIDE*

Research indicates that incidents in which women kill their husbands are more likely to involve victim precipitation than incidents in which men kill their wives. Formulating a causal interpretation of this finding, however, is complicated because the observed pattern may reflect gender differences in violence rather than any special dynamics between husbands and wives. In this research, we introduce and illustrate a framework for disentangling the effects of intimacy and gender on violence. We examine the additive and multiplicative effects of the gender of the offender, the gender of the victim, and the relationship between the offender and victim on victim precipitation. For the most part, the pattern of victim precipitation in homicide reflects the fact that males tend to be more violent than females. However, we find some evidence of special dynamics for intimate partner homicides: Men who are killed by their partners tend to have more violent records than men who are killed in other circumstances.     

INTIMACY AND HOMICIDE: COMPENSATING FOR MISSING DATA IN THE SHR*

The Supplementary Homicide Report (SHR) of the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Program remains the most accessible and widely used database on lethal violence in the United States. However, researchers using this database must address the problem of missing data, which typically is the result of the failure to file, inconsistent filing of reports to the FBI by local police agencies, or incomplete records about the characteristics of specific incidents of homicide (particularly, missing information about perpetrators), even when reports are filed. Williams and Flewelling (1987) proposed methods of compensating for missing information, and this paper revisits their assessment by again determining the extent of the problem and the consequences of adjusting for it. Alternative methods are proposed and analyzed, with a focus on relationship‐specific rates (i.e., rates of family, intimate nonfamily, acquaintance, and stranger homicide). The implications of the results for further use of the SHR are discussed.     

REASSESSING NONLINEARITY IN THE URBAN DISADVANTAGE/VIOLENT CRIME RELATIONSHIP: AN EXAMPLE OF METHODOLOGICAL BIAS FROM LOG TRANSFORMATION*

Sociologists and criminologists have become increasingly concerned with nonlinear relationships and interaction effects. For example, some recent studies suggest that the positive relationship between neighborhood disadvantage and violent crime is nonlinear with an accelerating slope, whereas other research indicates a nonlinear decelerating slope. The present paper considers the possibility that this inconsistency in findings is partially caused by lack of attention to an important methodological concern. Specifically, we argue that researchers have not been sensitive to the ways in which logarithmic transformation of the dependent variable can bias tests for nonlinearity and statistical interaction. We illustrate this point using demographic and violent crime data for urban neighborhoods, and we propose an alternative procedure to log transformation that involves the use of weighted least‐squares regression, heteroscedasticity consistent standard errors, and diagnostics for influential observations.     

AN APPLICABILITY OF THE LIVELIHOODS APPROACH IN THE ASSESSMENT OF POVERTY IN URBAN CHINA

The paper aims to examine an applicability of the livelihoods approach to poverty studies in urban China. Basically, the approach identifies the poor as active agents tackling the problem with the type and level of capabilities, assets, activities on which they draw for their livelihoods. It highlights the multifaceted reality of their struggles against poverty. This paper argues that the livelihoods approach, which takes a people-centred approach to reduce poverty, can be a new platform for the assessment of poverty in urban China.     

THE IMPACT OF FAMILY STRUCTURE AND QUALITY ON DELINQUENCY: A COMPARATIVE ASSESSMENT OF STRUCTURAL AND FUNCTIONAL FACTORS*

Despite the plethora of studies of broken homes, multivariate studies comparing the effects of the broken home and other theoretically relevant measures of the quality of family life are rare. This study examines the family structure versus family function issue by testing the comparative effects on self-reported delinquency of family structure and jive measures of family function. Five types of delinquency are considered. The data were obtained from a 1980 survey of 152 high school students in a small midwestern town. Item analysis and data reduction techniques were employed to construct six family quality indices and jive delinquency indices. Two types of family structure were examined: presence of both biological parents in the home v. other and single- v. two-parent homes. Multivariate analyses controlled for the effects of age and gender. Bivariate tests of the relationships between broken homes and delinquency were not significant, except for a moderate relationship between broken homes and status offenses. In addition, a bivariate relation between single-parent homes and delinquency was observed for status offenses only. Other forms of family dysfunction all were significantly related to overall delinquency and to status offenses. Moreover, several measures of family quality evidenced significant bivariate relationships to property offenses. violent offenses, and drug offenses. The importance of the broken home was further diminished when the direct effects of broken homes and home quality were examined in multivariate tests. Regression equations showed home quality and gender, rather than family structure, to be the more important determinants of delinquency. The family structure coefficient was significant in only 1 of 10 tests, a regression of broken home and home quality on status offenses. Efforts to expand the analysis to identify specific areas of family dysfunction were unenlightening.