9 research outputs found

    Spatial dimensions of the effect of neighborhood disadvantage on delinquency

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    esearch examining the relationship between neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage and adolescent offending typically examines only the influence of residential neighborhoods. This strategy may be problematic as 1) neighborhoods are rarely spatially independent of each other and 2) adolescents spend an appreciable portion of their time engaged in activities outside of their immediate neighborhood. Therefore, characteristics of neighborhoods outside of, but geographically proximate to, residential neighborhoods may affect adolescents’ propensity to engage in delinquent behavior. We append a spatially lagged, distance-weighted measure of socioeconomic disadvantage in “extralocal” neighborhoods to the individual records of respondents participating in the first two waves of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1997 Cohort (N = 6,491). Results from negative binomial regression analyses indicate that the level of socioeconomic disadvantage in extralocal neighborhoods is inversely associated with youth offending, as theories of relative deprivation, structured opportunity, and routine activities would predict, and that the magnitude of this effect rivals that of the level of disadvantage in youths’ own residential neighborhoods. Moreover, socioeconomic disadvantage in extralocal neighborhoods suppresses the criminogenic influence of socioeconomic disadvantage in youths’ own neighborhoods, revealing stronger effects of local neighborhood disadvantage than would otherwise be observed.OLD Urban Renewal and Housin

    Toward a Demographic Understanding of Incarceration Disparities: Race, Ethnicity, and Age Structure

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    Objectives Non-Hispanic blacks and Hispanics in the United States are more likely to be incarcerated than non-Hispanic whites. The risk of incarceration also varies with age, and there are striking differences in age distributions across racial/ethnic groups. Guided by these trends, the present study examines the extent to which differences in age structure account for incarceration disparities across racial and ethnic groups. Methods We apply two techniques commonly employed in the field of demography, age-standardization and decomposition, to data provided by the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the 2010 decennial census to assess the contribution of age structure to racial and ethnic disparities in incarceration. Findings The non-Hispanic black and Hispanic incarceration rates in 2010 would have been 13–20 % lower if these groups had age structures identical to that of the non-Hispanic white population. Moreover, age structure accounts for 20 % of the Hispanic/white disparity and 8 % of the black/white disparity. Conclusion The comparison of crude incarceration rates across racial/ethnic groups may not be ideal because these groups boast strikingly different age structures. Since the risk of imprisonment is tied to age, criminologists should consider adjusting for age structure when comparing rates of incarceration across groups.OTBArchitecture and The Built Environmen

    The Consequences of Spatial Inequality for Adolescent Residential Mobility

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    A large body of literature suggests that neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage is positively associated with out-mobility. However, prior research has been limited by (1) the inability to account for endogenous factors that both funnel families into deprived neighborhoods and increase their likelihood of moving out, and (2) the failure to consider how the spatial distribution of socioeconomic deprivation in the broader community conditions the effect of local deprivation on mobility. This paper attends to this gap in the literature by examining how changes in socioeconomic disadvantage between sending and receiving neighborhoods and the spatial patterning of deprivation in the areas surrounding destination neighborhoods influence future mobility among a representative sample of American adolescents. We employ a modeling strategy that allows us to examine the unique and separable effects of local and extralocal neighborhood disadvantage while simultaneously holding constant time-invariant factors that place some youth at a greater likelihood of experiencing a residential move. We find that moves to more impoverished neighborhoods decrease the likelihood of subsequent mobility and that this effect is most pronounced among respondents who move to neighborhoods surrounded by other similarly deprived neighborhoods. In this sense, geographical pockets of disadvantage strengthen the mobility-hampering effect of neighborhood deprivation on future mobility.OLD Urban Renewal and Housin

    Disentangling neighborhood effects in person-context research: An application of a neighborhood-based group decompositiony

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    This paper proposes a framework to assess how compositional differences at the neighborhood level contribute to the moderating effect of neighborhood context on the association between individual risk-factors and delinquency. We propose a neighborhoodbased group decomposition to partition person-context interactions into their constituent components. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, we demonstrate the extent to which variation in the association between impulsivity and delinquency can be attributed to (1) differences in mean-levels of impulsivity and violence in disadvantaged neighborhoods and (2) differences in coefficients across neighborhoods. The moderating effect of neighborhood disadvantage can be attributed primarily to the stronger effect of impulsivity on violence in disadvantaged neighborhoods, while differences in average levels of violence and impulsivity account for 14 percent and 2 percent of the observed difference, respectively.OLD Urban Renewal and Housin

    Unpacking the Relationships between Impulsivity, Neighborhood Disadvantage, and Adolescent Violence: An Application of a Neighborhood-Based Group Decomposition

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    Scholars have become increasingly interested in how social environments condition the relationships between individual risk-factors and adolescent behavior. An appreciable portion of this literature is concerned with the relationship between impulsivity and delinquency across neighborhood settings. The present article builds upon this growing body of research by considering the more nuanced pathways through which neighborhood disadvantage shapes the development of impulsivity and provides a situational context for impulsive tendencies to manifest in violent and aggressive behaviors. Using a sample of 12,935 adolescent from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) (mean age = 15.3, 51% female; 20% Black, 17% Hispanic), we demonstrate the extent to which variation in the association between impulsivity and delinquency across neighborhoods can be attributed to (1) differences in mean-levels of impulsivity and violence and (2) differences in coefficients across neighborhoods. The results of a series of multivariate regression models indicate that impulsivity is positively associated with self-reported violence, and that this relationship is strongest among youth living in disadvantaged neighborhoods. The moderating effect of neighborhood disadvantage can be attributed primarily to the stronger effect of impulsivity on violence in these areas, while differences in average levels of violence and impulsivity account for a smaller, yet nontrivial portion of the observed relationship. These results indicate that the differential effect of impulsivity on violence can be attributed to both developmental processes that lead to the greater concentration of violent and impulsive adolescents in economically deprived neighborhoods as well as the greater likelihood of impulsive adolescents engaging in violence when they reside in economically disadvantaged communities.OLD Urban Renewal and Housin

    The demographic divide: Population dynamics, race and the rise of mass incarceration in the United States

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    This manuscript examines whether certain fundamental demographic changes in age structures across racial groups might help explain incarceration rates in the United States. We argue that a “demographic divide”—a growing divergence in the age structures of blacks and whites—was an important factor that contributed to the nation’s rising incarceration rates. Where age disparities between blacks and whites were higher ideological conservatism and religious fundamentalism increased, as did incarceration rates. We contend that historical forces shape how groups respond to subsequent social problems and proposed solutions to them and explore how “generational effects” may shape law and policy. Specifically, we suggest that states with older white and younger black populations created fertile conditions for a more punitive brand of politics and penal policy. We analyze decennial state-level data from 1970 to 2010 and examine whether differences in the median ages of blacks and whites contributed to changing incarceration rates within states over time. We situate our findings within the broader scholarship that has engaged the complex links between race, religion, political conservatism, and punishment. Our findings illustrate the importance of accounting for long-term shifts in social structure in understanding more proximate changes in law and policy.OLD Urban Renewal and Housin

    Crime and Inflation in U. S. Cities

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    ObjectivesThe current study replicates prior national-level research on the relationship between crimes committed for monetary gain and inflation in a sample of 17 U. S. cities between 1960 and 2013. Methods A random coefficients model is used to estimate the effects of inflation on the change in acquisitive crime over time, controlling for other influences. Results The estimates yield significant effects of inflation on acquisitive crime rates in the 17 cities. City-specific coefficients reveal nontrivial variation across the cities in the significance, size, and impact of inflation on acquisitive crime.Conclusions Continued low inflation rates should restrain future crime increases in many US cities. U. S. monetary policy should be evaluated with respect to its effect on crime.Accepted Author ManuscriptOLD Urban Renewal and Housin

    Hypermobility, Destination Effects, and Delinquency: Specifying the Link between Residential Mobility and Offending

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    Residential mobility is often implicated as a risk factor for delinquency. While many scholars attribute this to causal processes spurred by moving, recent research suggests that much of the relationship is due to differences between mobile and non-mobile adolescents. However, studies in this area often operationalize mobility as a single move, limiting researchers to comparing outcomes between mobile and non-mobile adolescents. This approach is rather broad, considering heterogeneity in mobility frequency as well as variation in sending and receiving neighborhood characteristics. We propose a more nuanced framework to help anticipate how characteristics of mobility experiences may mitigate, exacerbate, or fail to influence adolescent behavior. Drawing on data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) and the National Longitudinal Study of Youth 1997 (NLSY97), we demonstrate that “hypermobility” has detrimental behavioral consequences, increases in neighborhood disadvantage between sending and receiving neighborhoods are associated with reductions in self-reported offending, and long-distance moves reduce delinquency, but only among adolescents with prior behavioral problems. These results underscore the complex association between residential mobility and delinquency during adolescence.OLD Urban Renewal and Housin

    Incorporating Neighbourhood Choice in a Model of Neighbourhood Effects on Income

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    Studies of neighbourhood effects often attempt to identify causal effects of neighbourhood characteristics on individual outcomes, such as income, education, employment, and health. However, selection looms large in this line of research and it has been repeatedly argued that estimates of neighbourhood effects are biased as people non-randomly select into neighbourhoods based on their preferences, income, and the availability of alternative housing. We propose a two-step framework to help disentangle selection processes in the relationship between neighbourhood deprivation and earnings. We first model neighbourhood selection using a discrete choice framework and derive correction components to adjust parameter estimates in a subsequent neighbourhood effects model for the unequal probability that an individual ‘chooses’ to live in a particular area. Applying this technique to administrative data from the Netherlands, we find significant interactions between personal and neighbourhood characteristics in the selection model. This confirms individual differences in neighbourhood preferences; individuals non-randomly select into neighbourhoods. The baseline neighbourhood effects model reveals a significant effect of average neighbourhood income on individual income. When we include correction components for the differential sorting of individuals into specific neighbourhoods, the effect of neighbourhood income diminishes, but remains significant. These results suggest that researchers need to be attuned to the role of selection bias when assessing the role of neighbourhood effects on individual outcomes. Perhaps more importantly, the strong, persistent effect of neighbourhood deprivation on subsequent earnings suggests that neighbourhood effects reflect more than the shared characteristics of neighbourhood residents; place of residence partially determines economic well-being.OLD Urban Renewal and Housin
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