A Comprehensive Evaluation of the Association between Percent Young and Cross-National Homicide Rates

Abstract

Is there an association between the proportion of the population that is young and national homicide rates, and when testing other theories cross-nationally is it necessary to control for this concept? To answer these questions, we carried out an extensive review of the empirical literature and then used data for the years 1999-2004 from a sample of 55 nations to test two predominant hypotheses: Percent young is significantly associated with homicide victimization rates across nations, and percent young accounts for a significant proportion of the overall variance in homicide victimization rates across nations. The results consistently indicated no significant association between percent young and homicide victimization rates across nations. Moreover, including percent young in models of cross-national homicide rates likely has negative ramifications for model fit. We situate these findings within the larger literature and provide a discussion of the implications for future cross-national homicide research.

The contribution of age structure to the international homicide decline

“…Furthermore, similar to the United States, several countries experienced a relative decline in the population between 15 and 29 years of age, concurrent with a decline in homicide (S4 Fig). Despite the strong association between age and violent criminal behavior, several recent studies have proposed that age structure is unrelated to between-country differences in homicide rates [45–47] and to the homicide declines of individual countries [36,48,49]. In contrast, we argue that age structure is associated with international homicide trends since the 1960s, including with the international homicide decline in recent decades.…”

The (Null) Effects of Percent Young on 15 to 24 Age-Specific and Male- and Female-Specific Cross-National Homicide Rates

“…On the other hand, our findings should not be surprising given results of several prior studies (Gartner, 1990;Nieuwbeerta, McCall, Elffers, & Wittebrood, 2008;Ortega et al, 1992;see Nivette, 2011, for a meta-analysis and Trent & Pridemore, 2012, for a comprehensive review), including our companion study (Rogers & Pridemore, 2015). The mixed results of the sensitivity analyses and sequential ANOVAs mirror the inconsistencies found within the empirical literature, though this could be a model specification limitation.…”

Gender Equality and the Usual Suspects: A Cross-National Study on Female and Male Homicide Victimization

“…Averaging national homicide rates across time is a customary practice in the cross-national literature on homicide victimization. Averaging homicide rates help reduce the impact of yearly fluctuations and to minimize missing data complications (Messner & Rosenfeld, 1997; Neumayer, 2003; Rogers & Pridemore, 2017). The WHO’s definition of homicide is “homicides and injury purposely inflicted by another person, which includes the International Classification of Diseases 9th Revision categories X85-Y09” (World Health Organization, 2017).…”

“…1 While recent cross-national research has produced larger samples, they have done so at the cost of the integrity of their dependent variables (for further discussion, see Kanis et al, 2017). In the tradeoff between increasing the sample size and losing the integrity of the dependent variable, the reduction in sample size is less troubling and common in the cross-national literature (Messner et al, 2010;Messner & Rosenfeld, 1997;Neumayer, 2003;Pridemore, 2008Pridemore, , 2011Rogers & Pridemore, 2017).…”

“…First, by utilizing Cohen's equation to estimate the power of multiple linear regression models (which considers the number of variables included in the model), our power was always well within an acceptable range. The second reason is that there are multiple cross-national studies with smaller sample sizes, as this is not an uncommon issue in cross-national research (Messner et al, 2010;Messner & Rosenfeld, 1997;Neumayer, 2003;Pridemore, 2008Pridemore, , 2011Rogers & Pridemore, 2017).…”