Is the Crime Rate Really Falling? An 'Aging' US Population and Its Impact on the Nation's Crime Rate, 1980-1984

• NCJ Number: 104779
• Journal: Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency Volume: 24 Issue: 1 Dated: (February 1987) Pages: 23-48
• Author(s): D J Steffensmeier; M D Harer
• Date Published: 1987
• Length: 26 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Statistics
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: *This document is currently unavailable from NCJRS. This article is a revised version of a paper presented at the 1986 annual meetings of the Population Association of America.

Annotation

In this article, we apply age-standardization methods to the Uniform Crime Reports and the National Crime Survey to determine whether the recent drop in the Nation's Index crime rate is due to changes in the age structure of the population.

Abstract

The major findings are as follows: little change in person crimes but small declines in robbery and larceny rates, and a large drop in burglary rates. Overall, the age adjustment explains about 40 percent of the drop in the 1980-1984 crude Index rate in both the UCR and the NCS statistics. When examined over a longer period, 1976-1984, the UCR and the NCS show opposite trend patterns. The UCR shows rising rates from 1976-1980, while the NCS shows declining rates. Two other national sources of crime data, the National Youth Survey and the Monitoring the Future Study, also report declining rates of crime/delinquency in the late seventies. Thus all three sources of unofficial crime data document that crime rates are falling but that the downward trend began prior to the 1980-1984 period. At the end of the report, we speculate that this downward trend in crime may be due to age effects not considered in this report and we forecast crime trends in the Nation's crime rate to the year 2000. Tables, graphs, and references. (Author abstract modified)