Open AccessAge, Poverty, Homicide, and Gun Homicide
Author(s) -
Mike Males
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
sage open
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.357
H-Index - 32
ISSN - 2158-2440
DOI - 10.1177/2158244015573359
Subject(s) - homicide , poverty , demography , poison control , suicide prevention , injury prevention , criminology , psychology , gun control , medicine , political science , sociology , environmental health , economics , economic growth , law
Traditional theories of “adolescent risk taking” have not beenvalidated against recent research indicating that youthful traffic crash, violent crime,felony crime, and firearms mortality rates reflect young people’s low-socio-economicstatus (SES) compared with older adults’, not young age. Aside from a small number ofrecent, conflicting studies, the literature gap on this key issue remains. The presentstudy examines the 54,094 homicide deaths, including 41,123 gun homicides, victimizingCalifornia residents ages 15 to 69 during 1991 to 2012 by poverty status. Withoutcontrolling for poverty, homicide rates display the traditional age-curve peaking at 19,then declining. When poverty is controlled, the traditional age-curve persists only forhigh-poverty populations, in which young people are vastly over-represented, andhomicide rates are elevated for all ages. This finding reiterates that “adolescent risktaking” may be an artifact of failing to control for age-divergent SES