Female Status and Infant and Child Homicide Victimization in Rural and Urban Counties in the U.S.

Abstract

Studies consistently show that female labor force participation is a correlate of infant and child homicide victimization. Research and theory supports the notion that as women's economic status improves, children are safer. Yet few existing studies make use of feminist perspectives to explain child homicide. Further, homicide studies have focused heavily on urban areas leaving a lacuna of understanding in the literature regarding rural areas. This study explores the connection between absolute and relative female economic status and infant and child homicide victimization in both rural and urban U.S. counties. Results show that absolute female economic status is positively associated with infant and child homicide in urban areas, but not in rural areas. I argue that in rural areas, stronger collective sentiment and less differentiation diminishes the effect of women's status on child homicide. While rural areas are characterized by harsh economic realities, these realities are nevertheless shared among men and women, decentering the link between child victimization and women status.

Intimate Partner Violence and Social Isolation Across the Rural/Urban Divide

“…Given its heterogeneity, direct measures of the rural context at a national level are difficult to obtain. Our identification of small, nonmetropolitan counties is consistent with previous comparisons of violence in urban and rural areas (Hunnicutt, 2007;Lee et al, 2003;Lee & Stevenson, 2006;Petee & Kowalski, 1993) and with the rural-urban continuum codes used by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service (Butler & Beale, 1994). 2 Others have noted the difficulties in classifying counties as "rural" or "urban" (Hall, Kaufman, & Ricketts, 2006;Weisheit et al, 2006).…”

Tracking Violence

“…Data for this variable were from the ACS. The measure of rurality used in this study was consistent with other studies examining urban and rural violence (Hunnicutt, 2007; Lanier & Maume, 2009).…”

“…The measure of rurality used in this study was consistent with other studies examining urban and rural violence (Hunnicutt, 2007;Lanier & Maume, 2009). Counties were considered rural if their total population was less than 20,000 and urban if their total population was greater than 20,000.…”

Cultural Sexism Moderates Efficacy of Psychotherapy: Results from a Spatial Meta-Analysis

“…This work has shown that women living in U.S. states with relatively higher macro-level material sexism-i.e., with relatively higher rates of women's poverty, higher wage gaps, fewer legal protections, and less female representation in state government-are more likely to experience intimate partner violence, poor self-rated health, more chronic health conditions, poor physical functioning, and premature mortality (for a review, see King et al, 2020). County-level variation in macro-level material sexism in the U.S. has similarly been linked to differences in risk for female homicide (Vieraitis et al, 2016), child and infant homicide (Hunnicutt, 2007), and intimate partner violence (Gillespie & Reckdenwald, 2017). Considerable effort has been made in these studies to rule out alternative explanations by controlling for other macro-level factors (e.g., area-level income inequality) and individual-level factors (e.g., demographics, marriage status, education status) that both vary geographically and influence health.…”