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

Abstract

This study demonstrate that the empirical literature on the structural convariates 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 specification, 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 dimensionally 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.