Changing Age Distributions of Lethal Violence: A Look at the Intermountain West

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Date

2003-04

Authors

Stockard, Jean

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Abstract

Today I want to tell you about work that I, and my colleague Robert O’Brien, have done on lethal violence. We have focused on violence directed toward others, homicide, and violence directed toward one’s self, suicide. At first glance, they may seem str ikingly different. We often think of violence directed toward others as involving impetuous, unbridled anger and aggression, while we think of suicide as stemming from deep despair, depression and hopelessness. Yet, we have found that these two forms of lethal violence are similar in two very important ways. First, the age distribution of both phenomena has changed in recent years, with younger people becoming relatively more at risk for both types of behavior. Second, the explanations for this changing age distribution are the same for both suicide and for homicide. [slide 2 – outline] In the moments to come I want to first just talk a little bit about the nature of cohorts and cohort theory and then describe the nature of cohort differences in lethal violence that we have found using national data. Third, I will show you d ata on regional differences in lethal violence, using a data set that we have not yet published on and focusing primarily on rates among teens. After that I will tell you about explanations that we have found for these cohort variations. Finally, I’ll st ep back from these analyses and reflect upon the implications of our work for social policy. I want to stress that some of what I will show you is preliminary in nature. We haven’t yet submitted our findings about regional differences for publication or fi nalized our analyses. In fact, you are the first people to hear about them. Thus, I will be especially interested in any comments or suggestions that you might have for our future explorations.

Description

44 pages. Presented as Keynote Address at the OASIS Conference at the University of Wyoming in April of 2003.

Keywords

birth cohort, lethal violence, Wyoming, Intermountain region

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