Collaborative Research: Violent Victimization in the U.S.: The Vulnerability of Minorities and Women Over Time

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In the United States, blacks and Latinos are more vulnerable than whites to violent victimization and women are more vulnerable than men to violence by intimate partners. It is likely that economic disadvantage plays a key role in explaining victimization risk. Yet, the relationships between violent victimization and race, ethnicity, gender, and economic disadvantage remain poorly understood. The present research will combine data on more than 6.5 million interviews from the National Crime Survey and the National Crime Victimization Survey for the years 1973 through 2008. The project then will use advanced statistical modeling techniques to study similarities and differences in the vulnerability of non-Latino black, non-Latino white, and Latino men and women to violent victimization over more than three decades. The research will examine victimization risks for violence generally, as well as risks for violence by strangers, acquaintances, and intimate partners, which are known to vary across race, ethnicity and gender, as well as over time. The project will produce a series of research papers assessing the complex ways that race, ethnicity, gender, and economic disadvantage combine to explain victimization risks over time, as social conditions change, and thus will identify changing vulnerabilities of minorities and women that constitute an important feature of life in America. The results of the project will have important policy implications. If, for example, we find that blacks and Latinos are more vulnerable to violent victimization during economic downturns, this could speak to potential benefits of economic assistance programs for reducing victimization. If differences in violence against women across race and ethnic groups are linked to poverty, this would inform the focus of victim-assistance programs. Because this project includes an interdisciplinary team and includes an educational component, it will promote cross-field training of both undergraduates and graduate students in the social sciences and in statistics.