American Violence Relatively High. But the Trend is Downward.
From a post by Paul Krugman at the New York Times that links to this post at Crooked Timber, written by Kieren Healy.
The terrible events in Colorado this morning prompted me to update an old post about comparative death rates from assault across different societies. The following figures are from the OECD for deaths due to assault per 100,000 population from 1960 to the present. As before, the most striking features of the data are (1) how much more violent the U.S. is than other OECD countries (except possibly Estonia and Mexico, not shown here), and (2) the degree of change—-and recently, decline—-there has been in the U.S. time series considered by itself. Note that “assault” as a cause of death does not distinguish the mechanism of death (gunshot, stabbing, etc). If anyone knows of a similar time series for homicides specifically, let me know.
Beezer here. As is often the case I begin with economist’s view, then from that site scroll over to New York Times economics columnist Paul Krugman, who then points me towards the Crooked Timber post by Healy. The internet is truly an amazing place, particularly useful once you’ve sorted out who you can trust from the trolls and their propaganda sites. That takes a while.
Tags: American Violence, Crooked Timber, Economist's View, Kieren Healy, New York Times, Paul Krugman
July 23rd, 2012 at 10:41 pm
So what.
July 24th, 2012 at 7:31 am
Just some info that came up because of the Aurora incident. I wanted to post it so I wouldn’t lose it. The US is way above other developed countries, in case you didn’t notice.
But it’s declining, so that’s good.
November 13th, 2012 at 7:18 pm
There might be some thing wrong with your on page links. You should have someone take a look at the web site.