Overview

Abstract (English)

Two geographically and culturally connected nations, the United States and Canada, have starkly contrasting violent crime rates. Comparable surveys show that American teenagers on average are three times as likely to engage in fights as their Canadian peers and that this cross-country violence gap exists even among children as young as 4-5 years old. Conventional arguments believed to account for this sharp contrast in violence rates prove to have limited explanatory power. The US violence premium remains a puzzle. Using rich information provided by large-scale individual level longitudinal survey data, this study performs a Canada-US comparative analysis with a special focus on the role of maternal work after birth in determining children’s violent anti-social behaviour. The fact that 1/3 of American mothers and only 5% of Canadian mothers start full time work within 3 months after birth explains a considerable portion of the US-Canada difference in violence rates both for boys and for girls.

Abstract (French)

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