Age Structure and Crime: Symmetry Versus Asymmetry and the Projection of Crime Rates Through the 1990s

Abstract

This paper asks whether decreases in the proportion of the U.S. population in high crime-prone ages in recent years have produced decreases in crime rates which correspond approximately, but in an inverse direction, to the increases observed when the baby boomers reached the high crime-prone ages in the 1960s and 1970s. We examine age distributions of arrests for murder and motor vehicle theft and then specify and estimate structural-equation models of the time trajectories in annual rates of these crimes for the post-World War II period. With these models, we test the hypothesis that the relationship of crime to age composition is symmetric and infer that it cannot be rejected. We also find that simple models that contain effects of trends in the age structure, business cycles, trends in criminal opportunity, and the rate of imprisonment can account for most of the variance in annual rates of homicide and motor vehicle theft from 1946 through 1984. We discuss some implications of our findings for forecasting U.S. crime rates for the remainder of this century and for theories of the macrodynamics of crime causation. (abstract Adapted from Source: American Sociological Review, 1987. Copyright © 1987 by the American Sociological Association) Age Factors Crime Causes Crime Rates Statistical Data 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s Adult Violence Adult Offender Adult Crime Violence Causes Violence Rates 03-00