Since the CDC mortality data includes place of birth I figured I’d compare the homicide rates of the US born population to those of foreign origin.
Sadly, the break down by country can be pretty rough, since it only includes Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Canada, US Island Territories and a category called Remainder of the World. Also, as I mentioned in my last post, because of privacy restrictions data on place of birth is only available up to 2004.
Race
Blacks born outside the US (and Puerto Rico, Cuba, Canada US Island Territories, and Mexico) are less violent than those born in the US. Whites born in the US, in contrast, are less violent than those born in the rest of the world (mostly Europe since it excludes Canada)
The chart starts in 1997 because that’s when all States recorded the Hispanic origin of the decedent. The Black and White categories in this post obviously refer to Non-Hispanic Blacks and Non-Hispanic Whites.
When we look at only Canadians, it turns out they are less violent than the native born. There are less than a million Canadian born people in the United States, so there is bound to be more variation, but the pattern is clear, as we should see, along with Blacks these are the only two groups to consistently have lower homicide rates than the US born.
Hispanics
At the national level all states report Hispanic origin since 1997, but some states (those with large Hispanic populations) have information as far back as 1985. We can use this information to compare the different Hispanic groups with their foreign born counterparts.
State Level Data
Puerto Ricans
Mexicans
Cubans
With the notorious exception of Arizona, we see a convergence of homicide rates between the native born and the foreign born (but keep in mind the 3rd chart from the top that shows that at least in 2004 the homicide rate of foreign born Hispanics was still higher at the national level)
New Mexicans
New Mexicans are kind of special in that they don’t register their Hispanic origin as Mexican but as other (they were only part of Mexico for ~30 years and quite removed from the center of power).
Even if homicides have been trending down for Hispanics, mostly driven by those born outside the US, they still have higher rates than whites.
