Longitudinal Analysis of the Welfare-Homicide Relationship: Testing Two (Nonreductionist) Macro-Level Theories

• NCJ Number: 193221
• Journal: Homicide Studies Volume: 6 Issue: 1 Dated: February 2002 Pages: 39-60
• Author(s): Mitchell B. Chamlin; John K. Cochran; Christopher T. Lowenkamp
• Date Published: 2002
• Length: 22 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This article describes the macro-level association between welfare and homicide within the United States.

Abstract

Welfare transfers have been found to exhibit negative, partial effects on homicide rates. However, it may be necessary to reexamine this association with longitudinal data to gain a better understanding of the causal mechanisms that underlie the ecological relationship between welfare and homicide. There are two nonreductionist macro-level explanations for the covariation between welfare and homicide. The first is the social altruism hypothesis, which focuses on the influence of charitable acts, both public and private, on rates of criminal behavior. The second is the social threat hypothesis, which focuses on the relationship between threatening acts and/or threatening populations and mechanisms of beneficent (welfare) and coercive (law enforcement) forms of social control. The hypotheses are: (1) to the extent that welfare transfers negatively affect homicide, their impact is likely to be limited to homicides among family members; and (2) to the extent that the level of welfare increases in response to the social threat produced by an increase in homicide, the response would most likely be limited to felony homicides. Autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) techniques were used to disentangle the reciprocal relationship between total and disaggregated counts of homicide and welfare transfers within Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Results show that felony homicides, most likely to be perceived as threatening to social elites, are unrelated to welfare recipients. The number of welfare recipients per month is negatively associated with the monthly level of family homicides (one-month lag) but exhibit null effects with the monthly level of homicides involving persons with more distal relational ties (friends, acquaintances, strangers). These findings are consistent with the macro-level proposition that beneficent acts promote altruistic values, which reduce the incidence of crime, especially among those who already have established bonds of mutual interest and caring. 3 tables, 8 notes, 52 references