Abstract
Prior research has documented a higher rate of violent crime within the South relative to other U.S. regions. Some scholars argue that higher rates of violence in the South are due to the lasting effect of the unique culture of the Scots-Irish immigrants that came into the U.S. in the mid-1700's. Though there is a large body of literature examining the link between culture and violence in the South, an implicit assumption of this line of study is that the cultural effect occurs largely within the white male population in rural Southern areas. No study, to our knowledge, has extended this thesis to females. We address this omission in prior analyses by empirically testing the Southern Culture of Violence thesis using female arrest rates. Drawing on countylevel ancestry data from the 2000 Census and UCR Supplementary Homicide Report data, we estimate a series of negative binomial regression models. A conclusion and discussion of the results follow.
Recommended Citation
Berthelot, Emily, Troy Blanchard, and Timothy Brown. 2008. "Scots-Irish Women and the Southern Culture of Violence: The Influence of Scots-Irish Females on High Rates of Southern Violence." Journal of Rural Social Sciences, 23(2): Article 9. Available at: https://egrove.olemiss.edu/jrss/vol23/iss2/9
Publication Date
12-31-2008
