Social welfare support and homicide: Longitudinal analyses of European countries from 1994 to 2010

• We explore the relationship between changes in welfare support and homicide trends.
• A decomposition design was used to analyze 29 European nations between 1994 and 2010.
• The period witnessed changes in homicide rates and economic prosperity/fiscal crisis.
• Short-term changes in welfare spending are inversely associated with homicide trends.
• Longitudinal analyses showed a lagged relationship of two to three years.

The purpose of this research is to explore the extent to which retrenchment in welfare support is related to homicide trends across European countries between 1994 and 2010. Using a longitudinal decomposition design that allows for stronger causal inferences compared to typical cross-sectional designs, we examine these potential linkages between social support spending and homicide with data collected from a heterogeneous sample of European nations, including twenty Western nations and nine less frequently analyzed East-Central nations, during recent years in which European nations generally witnessed substantial changes in homicide rates as well as both economic prosperity and fiscal crisis. Results suggest that even incremental, short-term changes in welfare support spending are associated with short-term reductions in homicide—specifically, impacting homicide rates within two to three years for this sample of European nations.