Common Good Labs

Our partners' research is featured as a top story in The Economist this week. Rohit Acharya and Rhett Morris of Common Good Labs recently published a report at The Brookings Institution that examined changes in violent crime. This research showed that the spike in murders during 2020 and decline last year was directly connected to unemployment among young men and school closures in low-income areas. Here's a selection from the article on their key findings. "Using weekly national homicide data, Messrs Acharya and Morris show that throughout the summer of 2020 murders rose 30% compared with the summer of 2019. Crucially, they do not find an inflection point around the end of May, when [George] Floyd was killed. Across the six weeks preceding his death national weekly murders increased by around 17 murders per week, a rate 70% greater than the same period in 2019. And during the six weeks following his death, murders rose at a similar rate. What, then, caused this increase? The authors theorise that the economic circumstances of the pandemic are to blame. Criminologists concur that, in general, poverty correlates with crime rates… Poorer neighbourhoods were also disproportionately affected by the pandemic: job losses and high-school dropout rates were far higher. Cities with a greater share of young men living in these conditions saw larger increases in homicides in 2020." The full article can be found here: https://lnkd.in/eghz8rZ6

Our partners' research is featured as a top story in The Economist this week. Rohit Acharya and Rhett Morris of Common Good Labs recently published a report at The Brookings Institution that examined changes in violent crime. This research showed that the spike in murders during 2020 and decline last year was directly connected to unemployment among young men and school closures in low-income areas. Here's a selection from the article on their key findings. "Using weekly national homicide data, Messrs Acharya and Morris show that throughout the summer of 2020 murders rose 30% compared with the summer of 2019. Crucially, they do not find an inflection point around the end of May, when [George] Floyd was killed. Across the six weeks preceding his death national weekly murders increased by around 17 murders per week, a rate 70% greater than the same period in 2019. And during the six weeks following his death, murders rose at a similar rate. What, then, caused this increase? The authors theorise that the economic circumstances of the pandemic are to blame. Criminologists concur that, in general, poverty correlates with crime rates… Poorer neighbourhoods were also disproportionately affected by the pandemic: job losses and high-school dropout rates were far higher. Cities with a greater share of young men living in these conditions saw larger increases in homicides in 2020." The full article can be found here: https://lnkd.in/eghz8rZ6

The Washington Post covered recent research by our partners Rohit Acharya and Rhett Morris. This research shows that the spike in murders seen in 2020 and 2021 can be linked directly to young men and teen boys in low-income neighborhoods being pushed out of work and school. As employment has rebounded in recent years and teens have reconnected with school, we see that homicides have fallen in most areas of the country. Read more at: https://wapo.st/4a872eQ

The Brookings Institution just published new research by our partners Rohit Acharya and Rhett Morris yesterday examining why homicides spiked in 2020 and fell this year. New data shows the answer is likely to surprise many civic leaders.