Effects of Two Sources of Male Capital on Female and Male Rates of Violence: Men in Families and Old Heads

Abstract

Drawing on recent advances in community-ecological research, emerging scholarship within family sociology on the importance of men, and current research on gender stratification, this article lays out a theoretical framework and offers evidence of the importance of two forms of male capital, men in families and old heads, for lessening female and male violence rates across communities. Using arrest and ecological data from more than 1,600 counties and seemingly unrelated regression techniques, the author finds that the presence of men in families is integral to community efforts to reduce both female and male violence levels, net controls for ecological variables; old heads are moderately effective in reducing male violence levels. Men in families have robust effects on both female and male violence rates, though male homicide is somewhat more responsive to shifts in the presence of men in families and old heads. Gender differences across other ecological variables are minimal.