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A family's SES can be changeable over time. This study was the first to investigate if such within-individual changes in family SES are associated with parallel fluctuations in boys' delinquent behavior from childhood to adolescence. Participants were a community sample of boys and their caregivers (N = 503) who were assessed annually for ten consecutive years spanning ages 7-18. Fixed effects models revealed that changes in familial SES were related to changes in delinquency: Youths were more likely to offend during years in which their parents' SES was lower than during years in which their parents' SES was higher. Contrary to expectations, we found no evidence that this association was accounted for by families moving to different neighborhoods or by changes in parenting. Since within-individual models provide a stricter test of causality than between-individual models, these findings support claims that impacting familial SES may have a direct effect on youths' delinquency.

Background: This study tested the theoretical assumption that transformations of parent-child relationships in late childhood and adolescence would differ for boys following different offending trajectories., Methods: Using longitudinal multiinformant data of 503 boys (ages 7-19), we conducted Growth Mixture Modeling to extract offending trajectories. Developmental changes in child reports of parent-child joint activities and relationship quality were examined using Latent Growth Curves., Results: Five offending trajectories were found: non-offenders, moderate childhood offenders, adolescent-limited offenders, serious childhood offenders, and serious persistent offenders. Non-offenders reported high and stable levels of relationship quality between age 10 and 16. Adolescent-limited offenders reported a similarly high relationship quality as non-offenders at ages 7 and 10, but a lower and decreasing relationship quality in adolescence. Compared with non-offenders, serious persistent offenders reported poorer parent-child relationship quality at all ages, and a decreasing relationship quality in adolescence. Serious persistent offenders and adolescent-limited offenders reported similar levels and changes in parent-child relationship quality in adolescence. Although serious persistent offenders reported fewer joint activities at age 10 and 13 than non-offenders, a similar linear decrease in joint activities in early to middle adolescence was found for boys in each trajectory., Conclusion: Developmental changes in parent-child relationship quality differ for different types of offenders. This finding has scientific and practical implications., (© 2012 The Authors. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry © 2012 Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health.)