Stability or Change in Age-Crime Relation in Taiwan, 1980–2019: Age-Period-Cohort Assessment

Abstract

In this study, we use 1980–2019 longitudinal age-arrest data from Taiwan and applied the age-period-cohort-interaction (APC-I) model (Luo & Hodges, 2022) to examine the stability or change in the age-arrest distributions across five offenses. We focus on two research questions: (1) whether the shape of age-arrest curves in Taiwan diverges from the Hirschi and Gottfredson’s (HG) invariant premise after accounting for period and cohort effects; and (2) whether any observed period or cohort effects on age patterns vary depending on offense type. Findings indicate overall consistency in the shape of Taiwan’s age-arrest distributions after adjusting for period and cohort effects, which are characterized by relatively older peak ages and symmetrical spread-out distributions that diverge considerably from HG’s invariant projection and prototypical US age-arrest patterns. In addition, we find that period effects have contributed to higher arrest rates in recent years, and cohort effects have impacted somewhat the shape of Taiwan’s age-arrest distributions. These findings, along with recent cross-sectional evidence from Taiwan, South Korea, and India (Steffensmeier et al., 2017; 2019; 2020), further confirm that the aggregate age-crime relationship is robustly influenced by country-specific processes and historical and social transformations.