Do National Violent Cultural Traits Explain Elevated Homicide Rates in Latin America?

Authors

Don Soo Chon

Published in

International journal of offender therapy and comparative criminology. Pages 306624X261481187. Aug 30, 2026. Epub Aug 30, 2026.

Abstract

Prior studies often used a Latin American dummy variable as a proxy for violent culture. To overcome this limitation, the current research used two direct measures of attitudes toward justifying violence in general and wife-beating in particular from the World Values Survey (2017-2022) and the United Nations' homicide rate (2020-2023) across 52 countries. OLS regression analyses found no clear evidence that violent cultural attitudes predicted homicide rates. Instead, income inequality had a Latin American-specific effect, while affluence and government effectiveness maintained a global effect on the homicide rate. The Latin American dummy variable was consistently and strongly related to a high-level of homicide rate.

PMID:
42669150
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 31 Aug 2026.

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