WHO KILLS WHOM IN SPOUSE KILLINGS? ON THE EXCEPTIONAL SEX RATIO OF SPOUSAL HOMICIDES IN THE UNITED STATES*

A hitherto unremarked peculiarity of homicide in the United States is that women kill their husbands almost as often as the reverse. For every 100 US. men who kill their wives, about 75 women kill their husbands; this spousal “sex ratio of killing” (SROK) is more than twice that in other Western nations. Our analyses of spousal homicide samples from the United States, Canada, Australia, and Great Britain indicate that this contrast cannot be attributed to greater gun use in the United States, nor to a domain-general convergence of the sexes in their uses of violence. Significant predictors of the spousal SROK include registered versus de facto marriage, coresidency versus separation, ethnicity, and age disparity, but the impacts of these variables are not sufficient to explain the differences between US. and other nations’victim sex ratios.

[1]  M. Daly,et al.  Killing the competition , 2016, Human nature.

[2]  R. Dobash,et al.  The Myth of Sexual Symmetry in Marital Violence , 1992 .

[3]  D. Ranson,et al.  The Role of Gender in Intimate Homicide* , 1991 .

[4]  R. Parker,et al.  Family, Intimacy, and Homicide: A Macro-Social Approach , 1990, Violence and Victims.

[5]  J. Mercy,et al.  Comparing death certificate data with FBI crime reporting statistics on U.S. homicides. , 1990, Public health reports.

[6]  D. Counts.  Beaten Wife, Suicidal Woman: Domestic Violence in Kaliai, West New Britain , 1990 .

[7]  D. F. Hawkins,et al.  Explaining the Black Homicide Rate , 1990 .

[8]  R. Mcneely,et al.  Domestic Violence Is a Human Issue , 1990 .

[9]  R. Gartner.  The Victims of Homicide: A Temporal and Cross-National Comparison , 1990 .

[10]  Michael G. Maxfield,et al.  CIRCUMSTANCES IN SUPPLEMENTARY HOMICIDE REPORTS: VARIETY AND VALIDITY* , 1989 .

[11]  A. Goetting.  Patterns of Marital Homicides: A Comparison of Husbands and Wives , 1989 .

[12]  J. Mercy,et al.  Fatal violence among spouses in the United States, 1976-85. , 1989, American journal of public health.

[13]  M. Flinn.  Step- and genetic parent/offspring relationships in a Caribbean village , 1988 .

[14]  M. Daly,et al.  Evolutionary social psychology and family homicide. , 1988, Science.

[15]  D. Buss,et al.  From vigilance to violence: Tactics of mate retention in American undergraduates , 1988 .

[16]  G. David Curry,et al.  GANG HOMICIDE, DELINQUENCY, AND COMMUNITY* , 1988 .

[17]  Anson W. Shupe,et al.  Violent Men, Violent Couples: The Dynamics of Domestic Violence , 1988 .

[18]  R. Mcneely,et al.  The Ttuth About Domestic Violence: A Falsely Framed Issue , 1987 .

[19]  Robert J. Sampson,et al.  Urban Black Violence: The Effect of Male Joblessness and Family Disruption , 1987, American Journal of Sociology.

[20]  Kirk R. Williams,et al.  FAMILY, ACQUAINTANCE, AND STRANGER HOMICIDE: ALTERNATIVE PROCEDURES FOR RATE CALCULATIONS* , 1987 .

[21]  S. Khoo.  Children in de facto relationships , 1987 .

[22]  R. Lane.  Roots of Violence in Black Philadelphia, 1860-1900 , 1987 .

[23]  A. Browne.  When Battered Women Kill , 1987 .

[24]  S. Khoo.  Living together as married: a profile of de facto couples in Australia. , 1987 .

[25]  Steven F. Messner,et al.  ECONOMIC INEQUALITY AND LEVELS OF HOMICIDE: AN ANALYSIS OF URBAN NEIGHBORHOODS* , 1986 .

[26]  A. Booth,et al.  The quality and stability of remarriages: the role of stepchildren , 1985 .

[27]  J. Laub,et al.  AN ANALYSIS OF SERIOUS CRIME BY YOUNG BLACK WOMEN , 1985 .

[28]  R. Sampson.  Race and Criminal Violence: A Demographically Disaggregated Analysis of Urban Homicide , 1985 .

[29]  W. Darity,et al.  Does Welfare Dependency Cause Female Headship? The Case of the Black Family , 1984 .

[30]  Carmichael Ga.  Living together in New Zealand: data on coresidence at marriage and on de facto unions , 1984 .

[31]  S. Messner.  Regional Differences in the Economic Correlates of the Urban Homicide Rate , 1983 .

[32]  C. Bachrach.  Children in Families: Characteristics of Biological, Step-, and Adopted Children , 1983 .

[33]  H. Vera,et al.  Till death do us part: a study of spouse murder. , 1982, The Bulletin of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law.

[34]  S. Messner.  Poverty, Inequality, and the Urban Homicide Rate: Some Unexpected Findings , 1982 .

[35]  Judith R. Blau,et al.  The Cost of Inequality: Metropolitan Structure and Violent Crime , 1982 .

[36]  D. Rasmussen.  Pair-bond strength and stability and reproductive success. , 1981 .

[37]  G. Spanier,et al.  Married and Unmarried Cohabitation in the United States. , 1980 .

[38]  D. L. Mosher,et al.  Jealous Conflict in Dating Couples , 1978, Psychological reports.

[39]  Henry P. Lundsgaarde,et al.  Murder in Space City , 1977 .

[40]  F. Adler,et al.  Sisters in Crime , 1976 .

[41]  Richard Block,et al.  Homicide in Chicago: A Nine-Year Study (1965-1973) , 1975 .

[42]  A. Schlegel.  Male Dominance and Female Autonomy: Domestic Authority in Matrilineal Societies , 1972 .

[43]  J. Boudouris.  Homicide and the Family , 1971 .

[44]  A. Pokorny,et al.  A Comparison of Homicides in Two Cities , 1965 .

[45]  L. H. Day.  Patterns of Divorce in Australia and the United States , 1964 .

[46]  S. Lipset.  The first new nation : the United States in historical and comparative perspective , 1964 .

[47]  P. Bohannan,et al.  African Homicide and Suicide , 1960 .

[48]  Marvin E. Wolfgang,et al.  Patterns in Criminal Homicide , 1958 .

[49]  Judith A. Allen.  Sex and Secrets: Crimes Involving Australian Women Since 1880 , 1990 .

[50]  David F. Luckenbill,et al.  Male Dominance and Female Criminality: A Test of Harris's Theory of Deviant Type-Scripts , 1990 .

[51]  N. Smelser,et al.  The Urban Underclass , 1984 .

[52]  R. Bonnie,et al.  The spousal-homicide syndrome. , 1980, International journal of law and psychiatry.

[53]  Ann Jones,et al.  Women Who Kill , 1980 .

[54]  S. Steinmetz.  The battered husband syndrome. , 1978 .

[55]  Louis Roussel.  La cohabitation juvénile en France , 1978 .

[56]  Ś. Varmā.  The Bhil kills , 1978 .

[57]  A. B. Saran.  Murder and suicide among the Munda and the Oraon , 1974 .