In a message dated 8/14/02 3:38:21 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
<< Here's a link to a NY Times article: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/12/national/12MURD.html?ex=1030256121&ei=1&en=4 ca972cf978300ff It refers to a study by Anthony R. Harris, published in the journal Homicide Studies. He studies hospital admissions of assault victims, and finds that substantial advances in trauma care have reduced mortality among assault victims. That is, given an assault, the victim who would have died in 1960 (becoming a murder statistic) survives the assault in the 1990s. Thus, some of the declining murder rate since the 1960s may be attributable to better health care, not lessened murderous behavior. Has anyone seen the study? If so, does the finding appear genuine? As the news article sums up, "[T]he study could raise questions about how crime statistics are analyzed, and that researchers should consider whether medical care has improved when assessing local changes in crime rates." Interesting stuff for the econ of crime folks. Noel >> As I understand it, rates of all crimes, violent and non-violent, have trended downward since around 1980, and that in the 1990s we actually saw drops in the numbers (not merely rates per thousand) of crimes of all types committed in the US. The largest factor tending to reduce crime rates might be an aging population, since young men tend to commit a disproportionately large share of crimes (I presume excluding white collar crimes, but with the advent of crimes by computer hacking, I'm not sure if that's true anymore either). While improvements in medical care might well account for a simple drop in the rate of murder (or even in the number of murders), how could it account for a drop in the rate (to say nothing of the number) of assaults? Even the aging of the population does not seems able to account for an actual drop in the number of assaults when the size of the population continues to increase. I do know that states which have passed general concealed carry permit laws have seen rather drastic drops in the rate of homicide and other violent crimes; I'm most familiar with the case of Florida, which experienced a drop in one year from 50% over the national average (of homicides) to just under the national average--an average that itself was falling, even I believe if you take the average of only the other 49 states. Medical improvements seem incapable of explaining such sudden drops, which I understand have been mirrored in each of the other states that has passed general concealed carry. It seems likely that concealed carry has itself contributed to drops in murder (and other violent crime) rates. Concealed carry didn't really start until the 1990s, so obviously it can't explain falling crime rates in the 1980s, and I suspect that it alone can't account for falling numbers of crimes in the 1990s. Beyond aging and concealed carry, we could look at prison sentences and likelihoods of incarceration. During the 1980s in particularly candidates touting a "get tough on crime" agenda got elected all across the US, and federal and state governments passed all sorts of laws to increase punishments and the likelihood of their imposition. I suspect that the "get tough" attitude and its impact on crime policies also contributed to the decline in crime in the US. I know that economists sometimes model crime. Does anyone here at GMU model crime, and is it something someone here can do as part of a dissertation? Sincerely, David