A Reassessment of the Association Between Social Disorganization and Youth Violence in Rural Areas

Abstract

To study the association between social disorganization and youth violence rates in rural communities. We employed rural Missouri counties (N = 106) as units of analysis, measured serious violent victimization data via hospital records, and the same measures of social disorganization as Osgood and Chambers (2000). Controlling for spatial autocorrelation, the negative binomial estimator was used to estimate the effects of social disorganization on youth violence rates. Unlike Osgood and Chambers, we found only one of five social disorganization measures, the proportion of female-headed households, to be associated with rural youth violent victimization rates. Although most research on social disorganization theory has been undertaken on urban areas, a highly cited Osgood and Chambers (2000) study appeared to extend the generalize ability of social disorganization as an explanation of the distribution of youth violence to rural areas. Our results suggest otherwise. We provide several methodological and theoretical reasons why it may be too early to draw strong conclusions about the generalize ability of social disorganization to crime rates in rural communities.