AGE, PERIOD, AND COHORT EFFECTS ON DEATH PENALTY ATTITUDES IN THE UNITED STATES, 1974–2014

• Author: PHILIP SCHWADEL,ROBERT LYTLE,AMY L. ANDERSON
• Date: 01 November 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9125.12160
• Published date: 01 November 2017

AGE, PERIOD, AND COHORT EFFECTS ON DEATH

PENALTY ATTITUDES IN THE UNITED STATES,

1974–2014∗

AMY L. ANDERSON,1ROBERT LYTLE,2

andPHILIPSCHWADEL

3

1School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Nebraska—Omaha

2Department of Criminal Justice at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock

3Department of Sociology, University of Nebraska—Lincoln

KEYWORDS: death penalty attitudes, hierarchical age–period–cohort analysis, capital

punishment

In this article, we further the understanding of both changes in public opinion on

capital punishment in the United States and changes in the factors associated with pub-

lic opinion on the death penalty. Support for the death penalty may be motivated by

events happening during specific time periods, and it can vary across birth cohorts as

a result of cohort-specific socialization processes, demographic changes, and forma-

tive events that are specific to each generation. An explication of the sources of and

variation in death penalty attitudes over time would benefit from the accounting for

the age of the respondent, the year of the survey response, and the birth cohort of the

respondent. We improve on previous research by using multiple approaches includ-

ing hierarchical age–period–cohort models and data from the General Social Survey

(N=41,474) to examine changes in death penalty attitudes over time and across birth

cohorts. The results showed curvilinear age effects, strong period effects, and weak

cohort effects on death penalty support. The violent crime rate explained much of the

variation in support for the death penalty across periods. The examination of subgroup

differences suggests that support for the death penalty is becoming concentrated among

Whites, Protestants, and Republicans.

Almost 70 percent of nations have abolished capital punishment in law or in practice,

leaving the United States in a minority of nations that continue to use the death penalty

(Amnesty International, 2016). An estimated 80 percent of state-sanctioned executions

worldwide occur in the United States, Iran, and China (Messner, Baumer, and Rosenfeld,

2006). Americans’ approval of this practice is evident in popular opinion, which has re-

mained greater than 55 percent since the U.S. Supreme Court lifted the ban on executions

∗Additional supporting information can be found in the listing for this article in the Wiley Online

Library at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/crim.2017.55.issue-4/issuetoc.

The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and Eric Baumer for invaluable feed-

back during the review process.

Direct correspondence to Amy L. Anderson, School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Univer-

sity of Nebraska–Omaha, 310 Nebraska Hall, 901 N. 17th Street, Lincoln, NE 68588-0561 (e-mail:

amyanderson@unomaha.edu).

C2017 American Society of Criminology doi: 10.1111/1745-9125.12160

CRIMINOLOGY Volume 55 Number 4 833–868 2017 833

834 ANDERSON, LYTLE, & SCHWADEL

in 1976 (Jones, 2013; Toch and Maguire, 2014). Generally, most Americans support the

use of the death penalty as one form of punishment available to criminal justice agents

when a competent adult commits a capital offense (Ramirez, 2013a).

Public opinion concerning the use of the death penalty is important to understand be-

cause it influences both legislators when they are considering policy change and judges

when they interpret existing policy (George and Epstein, 1992; Nicholson-Crotty, Peter-

son, and Ramirez, 2009; Simon, 2007; Vidmar and Ellsworth, 1973). For instance, the

Supreme Court used public opinion to assess evolving standards of decency when it abol-

ished the death penalty for offenders who were 18 years old or younger at the time of their

crime (Roper v. Simmons, 2005). Moreover, research findings suggest that public opinion

concerning death penalty support is related to the within-state legality of capital punish-

ment (Erikson, 1976), number of executions (Jacobs and Kent, 2007), and county differ-

ences in charge selection, prosecutions, and the conviction of murder and manslaughter

cases (Baumer and Martin, 2013).

Although most Americans support the death penalty, there are differences within social

and political groups, such as race and both religious and political affiliations (Barkan and

Cohn, 1994; Britt, 1998; Unnever and Cullen, 2007a). Furthermore, researchers have iden-

tified structural characteristics that affected support for the death penalty, for example,

the political climate (Baumer, Messner, and Rosenfeld, 2003; Jacobs and Kent, 2007). We

expand on previous research by using public opinion data and age–period–cohort analy-

sis to identify trends in and predictors of death penalty attitudes in three important ways.

First, models that do not simultaneously account for the potential influence of time pe-

riod, birth cohort, and age have been used to identify individual characteristics associated

with increased support for the death penalty, which is especially problematic for assess-

ing the effect of age. Second, regardless of the effects of age, separating period and co-

hort effects is important because changes in public opinion concerning the death penalty

could be a short-term reaction to a specific event or public debate, or alternatively, cer-

tain cohorts may be more or less likely to support capital punishment, which would result

in more enduring and substantive shifts in public opinion. Third, few studies have been

aimed at examining whether antecedents of the death penalty have varied over time (or

across birth cohorts) as social and political life unfolds. Religious leaders make prominent

pronouncements that affect their followers, race-based perceptions of the application of

criminal justice sanctions may change, political partisanship around punitive criminal jus-

tice policies may grow or lessen, and the roles and behaviors of men and women are not

static. These kinds of transformations can lead to changes in the antecedents of support

for the death penalty.

In this study, we expand on previous research in three ways to assess change in support

for capital punishment. First, we simultaneously examine whether death penalty support

varies across age groups, periods of time, and birth cohorts. Second, we examine how the

general age, period, and cohort trends are affected by individual- and period-level char-

acteristics. Finally, we examine whether key individual-level predictors of support for the

death penalty vary across time periods, birth cohorts, or both periods and cohorts. We use

multiple approaches, including fixed-effects age–period–cohort models; the examination

of time trends by age and generation; and most prominently, hierarchical age–period–

cohort (HAPC) models to improve our understanding of the dynamics associated with

death penalty support.

HAPC EFFECTS ON DEATH PENALTY ATTITUDES 835

THE CURRENT STUDY

Polling companies have long asked about Americans’ views on punitive criminal jus-

tice sanctions, in particular, the use of the death penalty. The responses to these polls

have allowed researchers to study changes in death penalty views over time (Rankin,

1979; Stinchcombe et al., 1980; Toch and Maguire, 2014; Warr, 1995; Zeisel and Gallup,

1989). The general trend shows a decline in death penalty support beginning in the late

1950s until the mid-to-late 1960s, followed by a gradual rise in support throughout the

1970s and 1980s that begins trending downward in the 1990s (Page and Shapiro, 1992;

Ramirez, 2013a; Warr, 1995). Regardless of the fluctuations over time, more than half of

Americans have reported supporting the death penalty since the late 1960s, and current

support stands at an estimated 61 percent (Dugan, 2015).

Through our study, we further the understanding of both changes in public opinion

and changes in the factors associated with public opinion on capital punishment in the

United States. To date, the examination of support for the death penalty has been lim-

ited in terms of researchers’ ability to model potentially relevant sources of change and

socialization. Explication of the sources of and variation in change in death penalty atti-

tudes should account for the age of the respondent, the year of the survey response, and

the birth cohort of the respondent. The collinearity among measures of age, period, and

birth cohort (i.e., period =age +birth cohort), however, has prevented researchers from

disentangling these effects. Although there is no “solution” to this “identification prob-

lem” (Glenn, 2005), we used several approaches to assess age, period, and cohort effects

to understand better social change in support for capital punishment. We extend previous

research by examining three kinds of relationships with regard to death penalty attitudes.

We discuss each of these in more detail as follows.

AGE, PERIOD, AND COHORT VARIATION IN ATTITUDES

The first contribution of this study is to examine the independent effects of age, pe-

riod, and cohort. Research on views of the death penalty has been focused on changes

over time, but some social attitudes change across generations or birth cohorts rather

than across time periods (Ryder, 1965). Such changes reflect socialization unique to each

generation (Edmunds and Turner, 2002). The distinction here is between changes among

the population as a whole, regardless of when people were born (period changes), and

changes across groups of people born at approximately the same time (birth cohort

changes). The latter often leads to long-lasting social change through cohort replacement

(Alwin and McCammon, 2007). Period-based effects may also signify long-lasting change,

but they often indicate ephemeral changes reflecting short-term cultural or political oc-

currences (Schwadel and Garneau, 2014).

Political attitudes in particular are likely to change across birth cohorts (Alwin and

McCammon, 2007; Converse, 1976). Many political views are cemented early in life (Al-

win and Krosnick, 1991) and are particularly resistant to change over the adult life course

(Jennings and Niemi, 1978; Patrikios, 2008; Sears and Funk, 1999). Each birth cohort is ex-

posed to unique socialization processes that influence social views during formative ages

(Edmunds and Turner, 2002). Elder’s (1974) influential work about the Great Depression

serves as an example of the stable and lasting impact of cohort experiences on social and

political perspectives. Cohort-specific socialization processes may influence support for