Across U.S. years, the post-1976 fall in childhood lead tracks the later fall in robbery, the classic young-offender violent crime, at a Pearson correlation of about +0.93 (n=48 years, direction predicted in advance). The peak-lead birth cohort of 1971 to 1976 reached the modal robbery age right around 1994, the same point violent crime turns over. This is an ecological cohort alignment, not proof of individual causation, and lead is treated as one contributing factor among several, not a sole cause.

Source: DetectLead lead-cohort corroboration corpus (cohort childhood-lead vs FBI UCR robbery rate, n=48; cohort life-course march, 1971-1976 peak-lead cohort). Integrated childhood-lead driver, Nevin / Reyes reading.