Life-course processes as cause and effect of trends in gun violence

• In Event: WG-PLACE 4: Neighbourhoods, Policing, and Legal Cynicism: Spatial, Institutional, and Life Course Perspectives

Abstract

Cohorts are comprised of individuals that, as a result of being born in a particular range of time, all experience macro-scale historical contexts at a similar age. Life-course and demographic research on crime often focus on the micro-level (individual) outcomes of macro-scale (societal) causes such as mass incarceration or COVID-19. When societal (macro-scale) outcomes are considered, the focus is usually on aggregated individual outcomes such as mortality rates. Less often considered is how macro-level events affect crime-relevant social processes to produce emergent (i.e., not simple aggregate) macro-level outcomes. We present a tentative cohort micro-macro model of social change and illustrate it with multi-cohort longitudinal data using the examples of legal cynicism, concealed handgun carrying, and gun violence in America in the wake of socioeconomic instability since 2016.

Authors

• Charles C Lanfear, University of Cambridge

• Robert J Sampson, Harvard University