[lbo-talk] Southern vs. Northern violence

Miles Jackson cqmv at pdx.edu
Sun May 6 16:04:55 PDT 2007


Michael McIntyre wrote:
> Miles -
> You're right that you're still more likely to be a homicide victim in
> New Orleans than in San Francisco. But this was prompted by a
> dispute between Carl and andie about whether there was some
> "cultural" (for lack of a better word) factor peculiar to the south
> that prompts higher homicide rates there. "What everyone knows" was
> invoked on each side - that homicide rates are higher in the south,
> that homicide rates are higher in northern cities, etc. Either way,
> "what everyone knows" is wrong. Three of the five cities with the
> highest homicide rates are border cities (unadjusted: Baltimore, DC,
> & St. Louis; adjusted: Baltimore, DC, & Kansas City). But why does
> San Francisco, of all places, have so many more murders than the
> sociodemographic factors would predict?
>
> MM

Two points.

1. When sociodemographic factors are controlled in a regression model as this researcher did, any variance these factors share with unspecified variables is also controlled for. So if there is some cultural factor X has happens to be correlated with the sociodemographics, that local cultural factor is also held constant by this regression model. Thus it's not true that the regression model is only controlling the specified sociodemographic variables. Rather, the regression model is telling us that when we control these sociodemographic variables and many unspecific cultural/social factors, San Francisco is ranked #1. So what? I could easily create a regression model that "adjusts" the homicide rate to give any major city in the U. S. the highest rank. This is the important point: if you include different sociodemographic variables correlated with different unspecified variables in your regression model, the regression coefficients and the residuals will also differ (this is what social scientists call "the specification problem"). There is no reason to include only the sociodemographic variables that the researcher included; thus the "adjusted ranks" are arbitrary.

2. Looking at the homicide rates in few select cities is not an effective method for comparing homicide rates in different geographic regions. Fortunately, our good friends at the FBI do aggregate homicide rates by region. Here are the data for 2005, rates per 100,000:

South: 6.6 West: 5.8 Midwest: 4.9 Northeast: 4.4

The general pattern is consistent with Nisbett and Cohen's culture of honor hypothesis. --Interesting aside, I know Carl will love this: in one study, N & C exposed college students to an abusive insult (a person bumped the student in a hallway and called him "asshole"). Immediately afterwards, students who grew up in the South were more physiologically aroused, had higher cortisol and testosterone levels, and felt more hostile than students who grew up outside the South. In sum: The culture of honor in the South encompasses not just people's attitudes but also their physiological reactions when their personal honor is impugned.

Miles



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