Abstract
Intimate partner homicides (IPH’s) have been decreasing in the United States for the last four decades. There has been considerable research into the reasons for this decline. All the evidence has lead researchers to focus on a few key areas including gender, marital status, race, location of residence, and economic deprivation. This study focuses on location of residence, being either a rural or urban county, and unemployment rates in those counties in California for the years 1990-2000. Data on IPH’s were taken from the original study completed by William Wells and William DeLeon-Granados (2002) and data on unemployment rates were taken from the Bureau of Labor Statistics website. Rural counties had significantly lower rates of IPH and significantly higher rates of unemployment. Although controls were not used, it appears there is enough evidence to show that rural counties have a characteristic, namely collective efficacy, that reduces IPH despite high unemployment rates.