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At the current U.S. homicide rate, what is the average lifetime chance of being murdered?

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At the current U.S. homicide rate, roughly one in every 235 people in the U.S. will be murdered over the course of their lifetime. After rising steeply in the 1960s and 1970s, the U.S. murder rate has generally declined since the late 1980s, and it is currently about the same as it was in 1960. However, a 2002 paper in the journal Homicide Studies found that potentially lethal violence is much more common than it was in 1964, but the chances of dying from it are lower because of improvements "in medical technology and related medical support services," such as increased numbers of "local and county hospitals throughout the nation" and major advancements in trauma care developed during the Vietnam War. Concurrent with the rise of potentially lethal violence, the portion of murders that result in a suspect being identified and acted upon by the criminal justice system declined from 92% in 1960 to 62% in 2018.




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