Deltoid

Andy Freeman said:

the murder rate is HIGHER in comparable regions of Canada than it is in the US. See Centerwall's paper in the Dec 91 issue of the American Journal of Epidemiology.

Seattle and Vancouver ARE apples and oranges. The difference in murder rates is explained by the different racial fractions in each city.

Could you tell us what definition of "comparable" you used where Alaska and Yukon are "comparable" and Seattle and Vancouver are not?

Read the paper; it isn't my definition of "comparable".

I have read the paper. By the definition that Centerwall uses (geographical proximity, similar per capita incomes, percentages of crowded dwellings, white people) Alaska and Yukon are comparable, and Seattle and Vancouver are also comparable. By the definition Sloan uses (population size, growth, unemployment, education, median income, percentage with low incomes, percentage of whites, homicide punishment, robberies, burglaries and assaults), Alaska and Yukon are NOT comparable, but Seattle and Vancouver are comparable. In referring to Seattle and Vancouver as "apples and oranges" above, you define another criterion -- ethnic composition of minorities. By that definition, Alaska, Yukon, Seattle and Vancouver are not comparable.

It seems to me that you consider places in the US and Canada comparable if and only if the homicide rate in the Canadian place is higher than in the US place.

(BTW: I find your claim that "the difference in the murder rates is explained by the different racial fractions in each city" rather strange, when Centerwall has shown that when household crowding is controlled for, black and white domestic homicide rates in Atlanta are the same.)

Note that you can adjust for certain differences. For example, Seattle and Vancouver have the same fraction of whites, but the non-white minorities are different; Vancouver's minority population is mostly Asian with very few Blacks, while Seattle's minority population has far more Blacks. Therefore, even though Seattle and Vancouver are different racially, we can see what Vancouver's murder rate would be if it had Seattle's racial breakdown.

Seattle's homicide rate was 11.3. Vancouver's was 6.9. I did the calculation you suggested:

                            white Asian black Hispanic native
% of Seattle's population    79.2   7.4   9.5      2.6    1.3
Homicide rate in Vancouver    6.4   4.1   9.5      7.9   71.3

The weighted average of the rates is 7.4.

What's your point?