IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/35338.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Understanding international crime trends: The legacy of preschool lead exposure

Author

Listed:
  • Nevin, Rick

Abstract

This study shows a very strong association between preschool blood lead and subsequent crime rate trends over several decades in the USA, Britain, Canada, France, Australia, Finland, Italy, West Germany, and New Zealand. The relationship is characterized by best-fit lags (highest R2 and t-value for blood lead) consistent with neurobehavioral damage in the first year of life and the peak age of offending for index crime, burglary, and violent crime. The impact of blood lead is also evident in age-specific arrest and incarceration trends. Regression analysis of average 1985-1994 murder rates across USA cities suggests that murder could be especially associated with more severe cases of childhood lead poisoning.

Suggested Citation

  • Nevin, Rick, 2007. "Understanding international crime trends: The legacy of preschool lead exposure," MPRA Paper 35338, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:35338
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/35338/1/MPRA_paper_35338.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Steven D. Levitt, 2004. "Understanding Why Crime Fell in the 1990s: Four Factors that Explain the Decline and Six that Do Not," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 18(1), pages 163-190, Winter.
    2. Nevin, Rick & Bender, Christopher & Gazan, Heather, 1999. "More evidence of rational market values for home energy efficiency," MPRA Paper 35344, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Nevin, Rick & Jacobs, David / E., 2006. "Windows of opportunity: lead poisoning prevention, housing affordability, and energy conservation," MPRA Paper 35342, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Nevin, Rick, 1999. "How lead exposure relates to temporal changes in IQ, violent crime, and unwed pregnancy," MPRA Paper 35324, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. מחקר - ביטוח לאומי, 2006. "Annual Survey 2005," Working Papers 15, National Insurance Institute of Israel.
    6. Rick Nevin & David Jacobs, 2006. "Windows of opportunity: Lead poisoning prevention, housing affordability, and energy conservation," Housing Policy Debate, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 17(1), pages 185-207.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Nevin, Rick & Jacobs, David / E. & Berg, Michael & Cohen, Jonathan, 2007. "Monetary benefits of preventing childhood lead poisoning with lead-safe window replacement," MPRA Paper 35340, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Nevin, Rick, 2008. "Trends in preschool lead exposure, mental retardation, and scholastic achievement: association or causation?," MPRA Paper 35339, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Nevin, Rick, 2010. "Energy-efficient housing stimulus that pays for itself," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(1), pages 4-11, January.
    4. Nevin, Rick, 2012. "Lead Poisoning and The Bell Curve," MPRA Paper 36569, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Magnus Lofstrom & Steven Raphael, 2016. "Crime, the Criminal Justice System, and Socioeconomic Inequality," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 30(2), pages 103-126, Spring.
    6. Jessica Wolpaw Reyes, 2014. "Lead Exposure and Behavior: Effects on Antisocial and Risky Behavior among Children and Adolescents," NBER Working Papers 20366, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Nevin, Rick & Jacobs, David / E., 2006. "Windows of opportunity: lead poisoning prevention, housing affordability, and energy conservation," MPRA Paper 35342, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Andrew Leigh, 2020. "The Second Convict Age: Explaining the Return of Mass Imprisonment in Australia," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 96(313), pages 187-208, June.
    9. Altindag, Duha T., 2012. "Crime and unemployment: Evidence from Europe," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 145-157.
    10. Sediq Sameem & Shahdad Naghshpour, 2022. "The Relevance of Homicide Rate Convergence to Public Policy in the United States," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 42(2), pages 840-851.
    11. Anna Aizer & Joseph J. Doyle, 2015. "Juvenile Incarceration, Human Capital, and Future Crime: Evidence from Randomly Assigned Judges," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 130(2), pages 759-803.
    12. Luigi Bonaventura, 2011. "Enforcement of regulation, irregular sector, and firm performance: a computational agent-based model," Netnomics, Springer, vol. 12(2), pages 99-113, July.
    13. Yoonseok Lee, Donggyun Shin, Kwanho Shin, 2013. "Social Consequences of Economic Segregation," Korean Economic Review, Korean Economic Association, vol. 29, pages 189-210.
    14. Philip A. Curry & Anindya Sen & George Orlov, 2016. "Crime, apprehension and clearance rates: Panel data evidence from Canadian provinces," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 49(2), pages 481-514, May.
    15. Sourav Batabyal, 2011. "Temporal Causality and the Dynamics of Crime and Delinquency," Atlantic Economic Journal, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 39(4), pages 421-441, December.
    16. Thorsten Chmura & Christoph Engel & Markus Englerth, 2013. "Selfishness As a Potential Cause of Crime. A Prison Experiment," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2013_05, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods.
    17. Parker, Karen F. & Stansfield, Richard & McCall, Patricia L., 2016. "Temporal changes in racial violence, 1980 to 2006: A latent trajectory approach," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 1-11.
    18. Robert Dur & Joël Van Der Weele, 2013. "Status-Seeking in Criminal Subcultures and the Double Dividend of Zero-Tolerance," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 15(1), pages 77-93, February.
    19. Nicholas Ajzenman, Sebastian Galiani, and Enrique Seira, 2014. "On the Distributed Costs of Drug-Related Homicides - Working Paper 364," Working Papers 364, Center for Global Development.
    20. Alexander Chudik & M. Hashem Pesaran & Jui‐Chung Yang, 2018. "Half‐panel jackknife fixed‐effects estimation of linear panels with weakly exogenous regressors," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 33(6), pages 816-836, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Lead Poisoning; Crime; IQ; Behavior; Violence;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • K32 - Law and Economics - - Other Substantive Areas of Law - - - Energy, Environmental, Health, and Safety Law
    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:35338. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.