Japanese Youths Homicide Rates

Abstract

Due to long economic depression, economic conditions of youths in Japan are deteriorated to the worst in postwar period. However, the number of homicide cases they commit is the lowest in postwar period. Accordingly, previous studies proposing that the low crime rate in Japan is resulted from economic achievements cannot explain the low homicide rate of youths. In this study, an explanation of the homicide rate of youths by the loss of motivation was attempted. Homicide rate is affected by economic conditions with the medium of relative deprivation. In order that youths feel relative deprivation, they should have high expectation, but youths in Japan today are losing the motivation as a result of bad economic conditions. Loss of motivation decreases relative deprivation and consequently it reduces homicide rate. Loss of motivation can be measured through local orientation. Local orientation is the inclination that youths are hesitant to leave the present province they are living. This inclination is resulted from the loss of motivation, and it is correlated with other phenomena resulted from loss of motivation. Local orientation can be operationally defined as the employment rate to other prefectures of high school graduates. As employment rate to other prefectures is lower, local orientation becomes higher. Accordingly, in this study, correlation between employment rate to other prefectures and homicide rate was investigated. Time-series data from 1968 to 2010 were collected to perform descriptive analysis and multiple regression analysis. To identify the self-correlation of residual, Durbin-Watson test was performed. From the analysis, it was confirmed that employment rate to other prefectures could explain homicide rate. The employment rate to other prefectures and the homicide rate showed similar trend during the target period of the study. In the regression analysis, positive correlation was identified at one percent significance level. In the results of Durbin-Watson test, positive autocorrelation was found in the residual. Therefore, low homicide rate of the youths today in Japan can be explained that they lost the motivation. Loss of motivation among youths is likely to act as a social burden in Japans aging society