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Objective: The purpose of this study was to present the epidemiology of homicide among children younger than 6 years of age in Jefferson County, Alabama. This study focused On obtaining great detail on homicides and suspicious deaths occurring within a fixed population. Methods: For purposes of this study, cases included Jefferson County deaths attributed to 'homicide' or that were 'undetermined' as noted in the coroner files among 'children younger than 6 years of age who were born and died between January 1, 1988 and December, 31, 1998, Victim and offender characteristics were obtained from the Jefferson County Coroner Medical Examiner Office records. Environmental factors and circumstances surrounding the death were noted as well. Results: The 53 study subjects were mainly female (55%), Black (69%), younger than 2 years of age (85%), had single mothers (38%), and a history of abuse (53%). Offenders were more likely to be male (64%), Black (73%), and a parent of the victim (53%). Homicides primarily resulted from an angry impulse (61%), with hands the most common weapon (61%). Conclusions: The majority of deaths in this study occurred among children younger than age 2, with a high proportion of fatalities among Black children of unmarried mothers. The offender most often knew the victim, with half of all homicides and two-thirds of all infant homicides involving a parent. More than half of the homicides resulted from an angry impulse, while the most common scenario for deaths with undetermined intent involved the caretaker finding the child unresponsive. Keywords: Epidemiology; Homicide; Children; Coroner data

caused by such a policy can in fact be more than offset by the additional revenue resulting from it. 19 See J.A. Brander and B.J. Spencer (1985), 'Export subsidies and [...]

The traditional theory of collective risk is concerned with fluctuations in the capital reserve {Y(t): t ⩾O} of an insurance company. The classical model represents {Y(t)} as a positive constant x (initial capital) plus a deterministic linear function (cumulative income) minus a compound Poisson process (cumulative claims). The central problem is to determine the ruin probability ψ(x) that capital ever falls to zero. It is known that, under reasonable assumptions, one can approximate {Y(t)} by an appropriate Wiener process and hence ψ(.) by the corresponding exponential function of (Brownian) first passage probabilities. This paper considers the classical model modified by the assumption that interest is earned continuously on current capital at rate β > O. It is argued that Y(t) can in this case be approximated by a diffusion process Y*(t) which is closely related to the classical Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process. The diffusion {Y*(t)}, which we call compounding Brownian motion, reduces to the ordinary Wiener process when β = O. The first passage probabilities for Y*(t) are found to form a truncated normal distribution, which approximates the ruin function ψ(.) for the model with compounding assets. The approximate expression for ψ(.) is compared against the exact expression for a special case in which the latter is known. Assuming parameter values for which one would anticipate a good approximation, the two expressions are found to agree extremely well over a wide range of initial asset levels. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]