tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13169838.post1288364833556275038..comments2023-07-31T15:17:30.792+01:00Comments on Christian Hate?: Gun crime and single parent families, yet againCyrushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00512481025183200804noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13169838.post-83295608518791581862007-02-22T18:14:00.000+00:002007-02-22T18:14:00.000+00:00All gun crime is committed by males. Nothing very ...<I>All gun crime is committed by males. Nothing very heroic about that, is there?</I><BR/><BR/>No. This we agree on. We could add that in general terms, most of the violence in the world is caused by males over the age of puberty but before they've had children of their own...<BR/><BR/><I>In my last post I made my own assumption that it is 80%, and as I said that may well be conservative, given the overwhelming concentration of gun crime in communities where single parent families are the norm.</I><BR/><BR/>This would be the ecological fallacy, no? The overwhelming concentration of gun crime will be in poor areas and these would be also the ones where many single parents happen to live.<BR/><BR/><I>there is massive underreporting of gun crime because victims are too scared to go to the police.</I><BR/><BR/>I'd imagine so - like all crime. The problem here is in the absence of some other form of data collection, we can't really hypothesize about it.<BR/><BR/><I>He is taking the number of males in the 16-24 age group - a range of nine years - and comparing the number of crimes committed in one year. So we are not taking account of individuals in this category who had committed gun crimes before 2005-6 but didn't during that year - e.g. because they spent the year in custody. Nor those who didn't commit gun crimes in 2005-6 but have done or will do subsequently.</I><BR/><BR/>I don't get this. Why would this alter proportions? And can we talk sensibly about what people <I>might</I> do in the future?<BR/><BR/><I>Chris estimates that 16% of the 16-24 year-olds grew up in lone-mother households. Coincidentally, the Unicef report (table 1.1) estimates that approximately 16% of children in the UK live in relative poverty. So if he has proved that single parent families are an insignificant factor in gun crime, he has also proved that poverty is an insignificant factor in gun crime. I rest my case, m'lud.</I><BR/><BR/>But it would be wrong to assume that the 16% of children from one-parent families correlates to the 16% living below the poverty line. And even if it did, doesn't this tell us something different? Isn't it possible that one of the reasons that the Scandanavian countries have lower levels of crime despite having family structures similar to ours is down to our greater level of inequality? It can't be a co-incidence that Britain and the United States have higher levels of gun crime and higher levels of income inequality.<BR/><BR/><I>But at the statistical level there is evidence to associate growing up in single-parent families and step-families with greater risk to well-being – including a greater risk of dropping out of school, of leaving home early, of poorer health, of low skills, and of low pay.</I><BR/><BR/>There's a lot there, although it won't have escaped your attention that a greater marginal propensity to commit gun-crime isn't there. I can only re-iterate that it is not my intention to pretend there are no social problems associated with single-parenthood; it's just that factoring in gun-crime seems to take something from the extreme end of a bell curve in order to have a go at single parents, which I'm not happy about. <BR/><BR/><I>He doesn't live in Peckham and won't go to school there.</I><BR/><BR/>No, thank goodness. But why, regardless of family structure, do people have to put up with schools of that quality and estates in that condition? Being a single-parent means you are more likely to be in the bottom income decile in this country. But isn't the gap between the top and the bottom end of the income spectrum a problem in its own right?Shuggyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00298179140317536572noreply@blogger.com