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Intimate partner homicide (IPH) is a critical public health and safety issue in the USA. In this study, we determine the prevalence and correlates of perpetrator suicide and additional homicides following intimate partner homicide (IPH) in a large, diverse state with high quality data. We extract IPHs from the North Carolina Violent Death Reporting System for 2004–2013 and identify suicides and other homicides that were part of the same incidents. We analyze the likelihood (in odds ration form) of perpetrator suicide and additional homicides using logistic regression analysis. Almost all IPH-suicide cases were by men with guns (86.6%). Almost one-half of IPHs committed by men with guns ended with suicide. Male-perpetrated IPH incidents averaged 1.58 deaths if a gun was used, and 1.14 deaths otherwise. It is well-known that gun access increases the chance that a violent domestic relationship will end in death. The current findings demonstrate that gun IPH is often coupled with additional killings. As suicidal batterers will not be deterred from IPH by threat of punishment, the results underline the importance of preemption by limiting batterers’ access to guns.

Frequent absences in the primary grades are associated with school disengagement, academic failure, and eventual dropout. The Early Truancy Prevention Project (ETPP) was designed to improve attendance of primary-grade children by facilitating communication between teachers and parents and giving the teachers the lead role in intervening with students when attendance problems emerge. In 2013–14, the current version of ETPP was implemented in 20 classrooms in five high-poverty public elementary schools, with 21 other classrooms in the same schools serving as controls. Our analysis of attendance data indicated that ETPP significantly reduced the prevalence of absenteeism without excessively burdening teachers. Teachers reported improved communication between parents and teachers and had a positive assessment of the effects of specific program elements.

Objectives. To investigate the validity of the apparent downward trend in the national case–fatality rate for gunshot wounds from assault. Methods. We reanalyzed the estimated annual number of nonfatal firearm injuries the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System reported from 2003 to 2012. We adjusted the estimates for discontinuities created by the substitution of 1 hospital for another in the sample and for a downward trend in the percentage of gunshot injuries classified as “unknown circumstance.” Firearm homicide data are from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System. Results. The unadjusted National Electronic Injury Surveillance System estimate increased by 49%, yielding a decline in the case–fatality rate from 25% to 18%. Our adjustments eliminated these trends; the case–fatality rate was 22% in both 2003 and 2012. Conclusions. With reasonable adjustments, the trend in nonfatal injuries from interpersonal firearms assault tracks the flat trend in firearms homicides, suggesting that there was no increase in firearms violence during this period. The case–fatality rate did not change, and trauma care improvements did not influence the firearms homicide trend.

Dropouts have high crime rates, but is there a direct causal link? This study, utilizing administrative data for six cohorts of public school children in North Carolina, demonstrates that those born just after the cut date for enrolling in public kindergarten are more likely to drop out of high school before graduation and to commit a felony offense by age 19. We present suggestive evidence that dropout mediates criminal involvement. Paradoxically, these late-entry students outperform their grade peers academically while still in school, which helps account for the fact that they are less likely to become juvenile delinquents. (JEL H75, I21, J13, J24, K42)

Most states have moved their public-school-entry cut date forward in recent years. In North Carolina the latest date by which a matriculant must turn 5 was recently changed from October 16th to August 31st. Those born in between the old and new cut dates (the “swing group”), formerly among the youngest entrants, became the oldest. Utilizing a comprehensive statewide administrative data set, we demonstrate that for the swing group the black-white standardized test-score gaps (3rd and 4th grade) has narrowed, and the gender gaps changed markedly to favor girls. These shifts are explained in part by the near elimination of redshirting for the swing group, and in part by gender differences in the gain to being older.

The editorialist discusses the American College of Physicians' position paper on reducing the public health crisis of firearm-related injury and how the focus and efforts of physicians and others s...

Key Points Question Is there an association between the likelihood of death for firearms shooting victims and the caliber of the firearm? Findings A cross-sectional study using 5 years of data extracted from investigation files kept by the Boston Police Department determined that the case-fatality rates of assaults inflicting gunshot injury increased significantly with the caliber of the firearm. Caliber was not significantly correlated with other observable characteristics of the assault, including indicators of intent and determination to kill. Meaning The findings are foundational to the debate over whether deadly weapons should be better regulated and provide evidence against the common view that whether the victim lives or dies is determined largely by the assailant’s intent and not the type of weapon., This cross-sectional study uses data from police department investigation files to characterize the association between firearm caliber and likelihood of death in victims and survivors of shootings in Boston, Massachusetts, between 2010 and 2014., Importance A foundational issue in firearms policy has been whether the type of weapon used in an assault affects the likelihood of death. Objective To determine whether the likelihood of death from gunshot wounds inflicted in criminal assaults is associated with the power of the assailant’s firearm as indicated by its caliber. Design, Setting, and Participants Cross-sectional study with multivariate analysis of data on shooting cases extracted by the authors from police investigation files for assaults that took place in Boston, Massachusetts, between January 1, 2010, and December 31, 2014. These data were analyzed between October 1, 2017, and February 18, 2018. In all cases the victim sustained 1 or more gunshot wounds in circumstances that the Boston Police Department deemed criminal. The working sample included all 221 gun homicides and a stratified random sample of 300 nonfatal cases drawn from the 1012 that occurred during the 5-year period. Seven nonfatal cases were omitted because they had been misclassified. Exposures The primary source of variation was the caliber of the firearm used to shoot the victim. Main Outcomes and Measures Whether the victim died from the gunshot wound(s). Results The final sample of 511 gunshot victims and survivors (n = 220 fatal; n = 291 nonfatal) was predominantly male (n = 470 [92.2%]), black (n = 413 [80.8%]) or Hispanic (n = 69 [13.5%]), and young (mean [SD] age, 26.8 [9.4] years). Police investigations determined firearm caliber in 184 nonfatal cases (63.2%) and 183 fatal cases (83.2%). These 367 cases were divided into 3 groups by caliber: small (.22, .25, and .32), medium (.38, .380, and 9 mm), or large (.357 magnum, .40, .44 magnum, .45, 10 mm, and 7.62 × 39 mm). Firearm caliber had no systematic association with the number of wounds, the location of wounds, circumstances of the assault, or victim characteristics, as demonstrated by χ2 tests of each cluster of variables and by a comprehensive multinomial logit analysis. A logit analysis of the likelihood of death found that compared with small-caliber cases, medium caliber had an odds ratio of 2.25 (95% CI, 1.37-3.70; P = .001) and large caliber had an odds ratio of 4.54 (95% CI, 2.37-8.70; P

Gun violence is a leading cause of death in the United States, where over 36,000 people were killed by gunshot in 2015 [including homicide, suicide, and accident ( 1 )]. The gun-murder rate is 25 times as high in the United States as in other high-income nations, and the gun-suicide rate is eight times as high ( 2 ). Interpersonal gun violence has deleterious effects on economic development and standard of living in heavily impacted neighborhoods ( 3 ). Given this heavy burden, it is greatly concerning that many aspects of the body of research on gun violence have been deemed inadequate and inconclusive by expert panels of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine ( 4 – 6 ). Fortunately, the flow of high-quality research has increased in recent years. Although the CDC largely withdrew from funding research on gun violence more than 20 years ago (under intense congressional pressure), there are active research programs in medicine, public health, law, and the social sciences under way in universities and think tanks. This good news, often lost in the well-justified complaints about the lack of federal funding, deserves greater recognition. New findings are providing a sound evidence base for policy-making and, among other contributions, have helped demonstrate efficacy in three important domains of gun policy: add-on sentences for gun use in violent crime, bans on gun possession by those convicted of domestic violence, and restrictions on carrying concealed firearms in public.

Gun violence exacts a lethal toll on public health. This paper focuses on reducing access to firearms by dangerous offenders, contributing original empirical data on the gun transactions that arm offenders in Chicago. Conducted in the fall of 2013, analysis of an open-ended survey of 99 inmates of Cook County Jail focuses on a subset of violence-prone individuals with the goal of improving law enforcement actions. Among our principal findings: *Our respondents (adult offenders living in Chicago or nearby) obtain most of their guns from their social network of personal connections. Rarely is the proximate source either direct purchase from a gun store, or theft. *Only about 60% of guns in the possession of respondents were obtained by purchase or trade. Other common arrangements include sharing guns and holding guns for others. *About one in seven respondents report selling guns, but in only a few cases as a regular source of income. *Gangs continue to play some role in Chicago in organizing gun buys and in distributing guns to members as needed. *The Chicago Police Department has a considerable effect on the workings of the underground gun market through deterrence. Transactions with strangers and less-trusted associates are limited by concerns over arrest risk (if the buyer should happen to be an undercover officer or a snitch), and about being caught with a "dirty" gun (one that has been fired in a crime).

While the economic model of crime suggests that improving post-prison labor market prospects should reduce recidivism, evaluations of previous employment-oriented re-entry programs have mixed results, possibly due to the multi-faceted challenges facing prisoners at the time of their release. We present an evaluation of an experiment that combines enhanced employment opportunities with wrap around services before and after release. This paper presents what we believe is the first randomized controlled trial (RCT) of a re-entry program that combines post-release subsidized work with “reach-in” social services provided prior to release. The sample was 236 high-risk offenders in Milwaukee with a history of violence or gang involvement. We observe increased employment rates and earnings during the period when ex-offenders are eligible for subsidized jobs, and these gains persist throughout the year. The intervention has significant effects (p

The editorialist, whose study 20 years ago is often cited as showing that 40% of gun sales lacked background checks, considers why the issue remains so important, as well as what has and has not ch...

In this essay I provide an account of how research on gun violence has evolved over the last four decades, intertwined with personal observations and commentary on my contributions. It begins with a sketch of the twentieth century history of gun control in the United States. I then provide an account of why gun violence is worth studying, with a discussion of how and why the type of weapon used in crime matters, and assess the social costs of the widespread private ownership of firearms. I then detour into the methodological disputes over estimating basic facts relevant to understanding gun use and misuse. In Section IV, I focus on how gun availability influences the use of guns in crime and whether the incidence of misuse is influenced by the prevalence of gun ownership, regulations, and law enforcement. I go on to review evaluations of efforts to focus law enforcement directly at gun use in violent crime. Next I turn to the hottest topic of our day, the role of guns in self-defense and what migh...

This paper analyses the 13 business cycles since 1933 to provide evidence on the old question of whether recessions cause crime. Using data from the United States, we find that recessions are consistently associated with an uptick in burglary and robbery, and a reduction in theft of motor vehicles. There is no statistical association with homicide. These patterns are suggestive of the relative importance of the various channels by which economic conditions influence crime.

Objectives Using the case of an on-going work-oriented prisoner-reentry experiment in Milwaukee, describe the challenges of organizing and sustaining a high-quality trial in the field in which only the randomization and data analysis are directly “controlled” by the evaluation team.

Background Residential sprinkler systems (RSS) are one intervention to prevent fire injury and death, yet there is no literature documenting why RSS homeowners opt to purchase a sprinkler-equipped home. This manuscript describes homeowners’ decisions to purchase homes with residential sprinkler systems (RSS) and their experiences with the technology. It also compares how RSS homeowners and owners of homes without RSS value sprinklers and their levels of support for policies to mandate RSS in new homes. Methods We used a national online web panel to sample owners of 1- and 2-family homes, and descriptive methods to analyze the resulting data. Results Our final sample included 1,357 homeowners of 1- and 2-family homes without RSS and 976 homeowners with RSS. RSS homeowners were more likely than owners of non-RSS homes to indicate they would buy an RSS home in the future (75 % vs. 30 %), and more often indicated a willingness to pay for sprinklers (70 % vs. 40 %). RSS homeowners also expressed higher levels of support for policies to mandate RSS in all new 1- and 2-family homes (48 % vs. 19 %). Conclusions The findings offer insight into educational and policy strategies to promote RSS in all new homes, and provide a foundation for future research in this area.

With costs exceeding $5.8 billion per year, violence against women has significant ramifications for victims, their families, the health care systems that treat them, and the employers who depend on their labor. Prior research has found that alcohol abuse contributes to violence against both men and women, and that stringent alcohol control policies can reduce alcohol consumption and in turn some forms of violence. In this paper, we estimate the direct relationship between an important alcohol control measure, excise taxes, and the most extreme form of violence, homicide. We use female homicide rates as our measure of severe violence, as this measure is consistently and accurately reported across multiple years. Our results provide evidence that increased alcohol taxes reduce alcohol consumption and that reductions in alcohol consumption can reduce femicide. Unfortunately, a direct test of the relationship does not have the power to determine whether alcohol taxes effectively reduce female homicide rates. We conclude that while alcohol taxes have been shown to effectively reduce other forms of violence against women, policy makers may need alternative policy levers to reduce the most severe form of violence against women.

Private actions to avoid and prevent criminal victimisation and assist public law enforcement are vital inputs into the crime-control process. One form of private action, the business improvement district (BID), appears particularly promising. A BID is a non-profit organisation created by property owners to provide local public goods, usually including public safety. Our analysis of 30 Los Angeles BIDs demonstrates that the social benefits of BID expenditures on security are a large multiple (about 20) of the private expenditures. Crime displacement appears minimal. Crime reduction in the BID areas has been accompanied by a reduction in arrests, suggesting further savings. Given the vital role of private individuals and firms in determining the effectiveness of the criminal justice system, and the quality and availability of criminal opportunities, private actions arguably deserve a more central role in the analysis of crime and crime prevention policy. 1 But the leading scholarly commentaries on the crime drop during the 1990s have largely ignored the role of the private sector (Blumstein and Wallman, 2000; Levitt, 2004; Zimring, 2007). The potentially relevant trends include: growing reporting rates; the growing sophistication and use of alarms; monitoring equipment and locks; the considerable increase in the employment of private security guards; and the decline in the use of cash (Cook and MacDonald, 2010). Private actions can be encouraged or discouraged through regulation of the insurance industry, reducing the costs of private co-operation with police and courts, gun control measures, and other means. The justification for such measures is the reasonable presumption that many sorts of private action to avoid, mitigate and respond to crime generate substantial externalities. Business improvement districts (BIDs) are a particularly promising institution for harnessing private action to cost-effective crime control. A BID is a non-profit organisation created by neighbourhood property owners to provide local public goods, including public safety. The organisation has the power to tax all the owners in the district, including those who did not sign the original petition. Previous evaluations of BIDs in Los Angeles (LA) indicate that they are successful in reducing crime rates (Brooks, 2008; MacDonald et al., 2009). We provide a further analysis of the costs and benefits, including the effect on arrests and spillovers, and we estimate a dose‐response

The population of South Korea is ageing rapidly and government provision for older people is meagre. Hence the erosion of traditional family support for older people is of much concern. Yet relatively little is known about the actual financial status of elderly Koreans or the amount of economic support they receive from children. This paper addresses these issues using data from the 2006 Korean Longitudinal Study of Ageing. We find that almost 70 per cent of Koreans aged 65 or more years received financial transfers from children and that the transfers accounted for about a quarter of an average elder's income. While over 60 per cent of elders would be poor without private transfers, children's transfers substantially mitigate elder poverty, filling about one-quarter of the poverty gap. Furthermore, children's transfers tend to be proportionally larger to low-income parents, so elder income inequality is reduced by the transfers. Over 40 per cent of elders lived with a child and co-residence helps reduce elder poverty. By showing that Korean children still play a crucial role in providing financial old-age security, we demonstrate how important it is for the Korean government to design old-age policies that preserve the incentives for private assistance. This snapshot of today's Korea also has implications for other rapidly changing Asian countries that are following a similar trajectory.

School violence, drug use, vandalism, gang activity, bullying, and theft are costly and interfere with academic achievement. Fortunately, crime victimization in schools for students and teachers followed the downward trend in national crime rates during the 1990s and has remained at a relatively low level since 2000. Youths are as likely to be victimized in school as out when it comes to theft and minor assaults, but the most serious assaults tend to occur outside of school. Despite the high rates of crime in school, school crime plays a relatively minor role in juvenile criminal careers. Nonetheless, school crime deserves public concern. The composition and operation of schools influence crime. A variety of instructional programs can reduce crime, such as those that teach self‐control or social competency skills using cognitive‐behavioral or behavioral instructional methods. School discipline management policies and practices are also important. Schools in which rules are clearly stated, are fai...

Despite the long-term decline in the number of death sentences and the lack of executions, the cost of the death penalty in North Carolina remains high. To document this cost, the empirical analysis here focuses on a recent two-year period, comparing actual costs associated with capital proceedings, with likely costs in the absence of the death penalty. The conclusion: the state would have spent almost $11 million less each year on criminal justice activities (including appeals and imprisonment) if the death penalty had been abolished. Additional criminal justice resources would have been freed up and available to be redirected to other cases. Copyright 2009, Oxford University Press.

Gun violence in North American is the subject of much speculation and debate, often based on limited or incomplete empirical evidence. We summarize the regulatory frameworks in Mexico, the United States and Canada, and provide statistics on gun misuse in these countries. Based on our analysis of publicly available information on sources of crime guns, we conclude that while the United States is a major supplier of illegal handguns to Canada and illegal firearms of all types to Mexico, quantifying the extent of its role, particularly in Mexico, is difficult because of data limitations. Still more difficult is to project the consequences of an effective crackdown by US authorities. If the illicit supply from the USA dried up, the criminal gangs could turn to a variety of other sources that already appear to be playing some role. A complete analysis of these issues must await more complete disclosure by the authorities of data on gun sources and trafficking investigations.

Several studies have examined the effects of state cigarette tax increases on youth substance use over the 1990s, with most--but not all--finding that higher taxes reduce youth consumption of tobacco. We advance the literature by using data from the 1991 to 2005 waves of the national Youth Risk Behavior Surveys (YRBS), providing information on over 100,000 high school age youths. We also are the first to make use of hundreds of independently fielded state and local versions of the YRBS, reflecting data from over 750,000 youths. Importantly, these data are to our knowledge the only sources of relevant information on youth smoking that were explicitly designed to be representative of the sampled state or locality. We estimate two-way fixed effects models of the effect of state cigarette taxes on youth smoking, controlling for survey demographics and area and year fixed effects. Our most consistent finding is that--contrary to some recent research--the large state tobacco tax increases of the past 15 years were associated with significant reductions in smoking participation and frequent smoking by youths. Our price elasticity estimates for smoking participation by high school youths are generally smaller than previous cross-sectional approaches but are similar to recent quasi-experimental estimates.

Using administrative data on public school students in North Carolina, we find that sixth grade students attending middle schools are much more likely to be cited for discipline problems than those attending elementary school. That difference remains after adjusting for the socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of the students and their schools. Furthermore, the higher infraction rates recorded by sixth graders who are placed in middle school persist at least through ninth grade. An analysis of end-of-grade test scores provides complementary findings. A plausible explanation is that sixth graders are at an especially impressionable age; in middle school, the exposure to older peers and the relative freedom from supervision have deleterious consequences. These findings are relevant to the current debate over the best school configuration for incorporating the middle grades. Based on our results, we suggest that there is a strong argument for separating sixth graders from older adolescents. © 2008 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.

This paper provides an economic analysis of underground gun markets drawing on interviews with gang members, gun dealers, professional thieves, prostitutes, police, public school security guards and teens in the city of Chicago, complemented by results from government surveys of recent arrestees in 22 cities plus administrative data for suicides, homicides, robberies, arrests and confiscated crime guns. We find evidence of considerable frictions in the underground market for guns in Chicago. We argue that these frictions are due primarily to the fact that the underground gun market is both illegal and %u201Cthin%u201D -- the number of buyers, sellers and total transactions is small and relevant information is scarce. Gangs can help overcome these market frictions, but the gang%u2019s economic interests cause gang leaders to limit supply primarily to gang members, and even then transactions are usually loans or rentals with strings attached.

To reflect on the divergence and overlap between alcohol and illicit drugs with respect to both current policies and policy research.For demand reduction, there is considerable overlap in programs and services for prevention and even more clearly for treatment. For supply controls there is mostly divergence, reflecting the difference in legal status. Research generally follows the same pattern. However, a cross-cutting research agenda on the supply side has merit.Even in a prohibition regime, law-enforcement agencies have considerable discretion. A systematic, pragmatic, 'evidence-based' use of that discretion to reduce harm is possible. It can be accomplished only by a continuing program of policy research that measures the harms of drug use and drug enforcement, assesses the effects of current policies on both these sources of social cost and explores alternative strategies. There is a similarly important project for alcohol and tobacco control policy. The goal for research on alcohol and tobacco is to document the extent to which supply controls can be effective in reducing harm; the additional goal for illicit drugs is to document just how much the current ideologically driven approach is costing the public.

Firearms are a leading cause of mortality among adolescents, and the guns that adolescents use to harm themselves or others often come from their own homes. In this statewide, multilanguage, community-based survey of 5,704 coresiding pairs of adolescents and their parents, we asked about guns in the home and compared their responses. The proportions of parents and adolescents responding affirmatively were similar: 25.7% and 26.8%, respectively, for any guns; 15.0% and 13.2%, respectively, for handguns. A paired analysis documented substantial agreement for whether there was any gun in the home and less agreement about whether there was a handgun in the home. The amount of agreement and disagreement was related to household composition and gender of the respondents. The disagreement was substantial for some groups (e.g., when boys residing in households containing a single mother and no other adults reported that there was a gun in the home, 64.8% of their mothers said that there was not a gun in the home). Implications for research and intervention are discussed. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The evidence base for the study of guns and violence begins with data on such fundamental issues as the number and distribution of guns, the number of people shot each year in criminal assaults, and the frequency of gun use in self-defense. It seems that these simple descriptive statistics should be readily available, and in fact the rhetoric of the Great American Gun War routinely includes reference to 300 million guns, or 100,000 people who are shot each year, or 2.5 million defensive gun uses (DGUs). But it turns out that such statistics should be viewed with considerable skepticism. Developing reliable estimates of basic facts in this arena is surprisingly difficult, even with the best of intentions.

It is a reliable though unexplained feature of national surveys that include items on gun ownership that wives are less likely to report a gun in the home than husbands. In this article we extend the inquiry regarding this gender gap in reporting of household guns to include adolescent children (age 12–17 years). The California Health Interview Survey of 2001, the largest-ever state survey of its kind, includes over 4000 marital households in which both a parent and adolescent child were interviewed and asked whether there was a gun in the home. There is little “age gap” in reporting—California teens are almost as likely to say that there is a gun as are their parents—but there is a gender gap among both the teens and their parents. We also find a large gap in personal experience with guns—boys are three times as likely to report hunting or shooting with a family member than girls. This difference in experience fully accounts for the gender gap in reporting. The relevance of these findings for the interpretation of survey data is clear. Whether there is a gun reported in a home depends to a remarkable extent on which member of the household is asked the question. Hence, the method of selection of respondent(s) from within a household will affect estimates of the patterns and prevalence of gun ownership, and, potentially, the accuracy of case–control studies that use self-report information about guns in the home.

This volume contains detailed reports on crime and punishment for six types of crime in each of seven nations. The nations were selected by the criterion that during the period 1981-89 they all had conducted several representative national crime-victimization surveys, which provide the basis for comparison of time trends in survey data with time trends in official recorded data. Sweden, not among the seven nations but also meeting this criterion, was included in an earlier publication stemming from this project (Farrington, Langan, and Tonry 2004); in this essay, we include Sweden in some comparisons. Five of the nations are English-speaking and are, or were at one time, British (England and Wales, Scotland, the United States, Canada, and Australia); the remainder are Western European (the Netherlands, Sweden, and Switzerland). These nations have in common that they are part of the "first world" of wealthy countries with stable governance and similarly advanced technological infrastructure. But they have substantial differences with respect to criminal codes and administrative procedures for recording data on crime and punishment. Considerable effort was devoted by the authors of the studies included in this volume to adjust available data to make them as comparable as possible. Here we use these data to explore crime patterns across the nations and over time, based on both recorded data and survey data, and to take some modest steps toward explaining the observed patterns.

Alcohol excise taxation increases prices and reduces per capita consumption (Cook and George Tauchen, 1982; Christopher J. Ruhm, 1995; Douglas J. Young and Agnieszka Bielinska-Kwapisz, 2003). In principle, a taxinduced reduction in per capita consumption of alcohol may be the result of both a reduction in the prevalence of alcohol abuse and the prevalence of moderate drinking, with opposite effects on mortality rates. The net effect on mortality could be either positive or negative and has not been established empirically. Some specific mechanisms by which drinking creates health risks and benefits are well documented. For all age groups, episodes of alcohol intoxication cause death from overdose or from injury resulting from accident or intentional violence (Ralph Hingson and Michael Winter, 2003). Chronic heavy drinking may cause death due to organ damage, including liver cirrhosis (Jurgen Rehm et al., 2003). On the other hand, chronic drinking confers some health benefits on middle-aged people, defined here as persons aged 35–69. Alcohol acts as an anti-cholesterol drug, and epidemiological evidence suggests that moderate drinking is associated with reduced mortality from heart disease and stroke (Giovanni Corrao et al., 2000). Thus an increase in alcohol excise taxes may reduce mortality rates to the extent that it induces a lower incidence of risky drinking and lower prevalence of chronic heavy drinking. But if older people drink too little in response to higher prices, then the result may be increased cardiovascular death rates. In what follows, we combine new estimates of the effect of per capita alcohol consumption on drinking patterns with a summary estimate from the epidemiology literature of relative risks associated with different levels of drinking. We calculate that a permanent reduction of 1 percent in alcohol consumption per capita, induced by a tax increase or some other mechanism, would have little net effect on mortality in middle age. Our sensitivity experiments suggest that the effect may be positive or negative but is always close to zero. Since there is no health benefit from drinking for younger people, and considerable risks, we conclude that the public-health case for increased alcohol taxation is strong.

Of the readily computed proxies for the prevalence of gun ownership, one, the percentage of suicides committed with a gun, is most highly correlated with survey-based estimates. It is the best choice for use in cross-section analysis of the effect of gun prevalence on crime patterns across states and larger counties. Analysis of this proxy measure for the period 1979–1997 demonstrates that the geographic structure of gun ownership has been highly stable. That structure is closely linked to rural tradition. There is, however, some tendency toward homogenization over this period, with high-prevalence states trending down and low-prevalence states trending up.