Latent Trajectories of Cross-National Homicide Trends: Structural Characteristics of Underlying Groups.

Relative to studies of U.S. homicide trends, few have investigated cross-national trends.

Social welfare support and homicide: longitudinal analyses of European countries from 1994 to 2010.

The purpose of this research is to explore the extent to which retrenchment in welfare support is related to homicide trends across European countries between 1994 and 2010. Using a longitudinal decomposition design that allows for stronger causal inferences compared to typical cross-sectional designs, we examine these potential linkages between social support spending and homicide with data collected from a heterogeneous sample of European nations, including twenty Western nations and nine less frequently analyzed East-Central nations, during recent years in which European nations generally witnessed substantial changes in homicide rates as well as both economic prosperity and fiscal crisis. Results suggest that even incremental, short-term changes in welfare support spending are associated with short-term reductions in homicide-specifically, impacting homicide rates within two to three years for this sample of European nations.

The dynamic relationship between homicide rates and social, economic, and political factors from 1970 to 2000*.

After reaching their highest levels of the 20th century, homicide rates in the United States declined precipitously in the early 1990s. This study examines a number of factors that might have contributed to both the sharp increase and decline in homicide rates. We use a pooled cross-sectional time series model to assess the relationship between changes in structural conditions and the change in homicide rates over four decennial time points (1970, 1980, 1990, and 2000).

Trends in environmental lead exposure and troubled youth, 1960-1995: an age-period-cohort-characteristic analysis.

Beginning in the mid-1980s and extending into the early 1990s, the United States experienced a wave of increased youth violence and teenage pregnancy. Nevin (2000) proffers a cohort-based explanation that these trends can be attributed to corresponding trends in gasoline lead exposure during the youths' early years. He contends that the increased consumption of adversely impacted their intelligence levels (IQs).