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Abstract: Objectives: To investigate whether neighborhood conditions during adolescence are associated with body mass index (BMI) extending into young adulthood. Methods: Latent growth curve modeling was used to examine BMI over three waves (1996, 2001, and 2008) of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (n = 9,115). Results: Parental perceptions of neighborhood disorder and neighborhood structural disadvantage were positively associated with BMI at baseline. Although parental perceptions of disorder were not associated with the rate of change in BMI over time, neighborhood structural disadvantage was positively associated with the slope of BMI. Adolescents who lived in more disadvantaged neighborhoods not only had higher BMI at the beginning of the study, but they also gained weight at a faster rate than those who lived in more advantaged neighborhoods at the first wave of data collection. The data also revealed notable gender, racial, and ethnic subgroup variations in the relationship between neighborhood context and BMI. Conclusion: The neighborhood environment during the critical period of adolescence appears to have a long-term effect on BMI in adulthood. Policy interventions focusing on the neighborhood environment may have far-reaching effects on adult health. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The persistent link between offending and victimization is one of the most robust empirical findings in criminological research. Despite important efforts to isolate the sources of this phenomenon, it is not fully understood. Much attention has been paid to the role of individual-level factors; however, few studies have systematically integrated neighborhood conditions. Using prospective data from the Pittsburgh Youth Study the current research examines a set of hypotheses regarding the interplay of neighborhood structural conditions and the victim-offender overlap. A multilevel analytical technique is applied to the data which purges time-varying covariates of all time-stable unobserved heterogeneity. Results indicate that the relationship between offending and victimization is pronounced in disadvantaged neighborhoods, while offending is not significantly related to victimization risk in contexts marked by lower levels of disadvantage. The implications of the results for theory are discussed, along with recommendations for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Education Longitudinal Study is used to examine Puerto Ricans' and whites' transitions out of high school and into young adulthood to weigh their relative chances of attending college and earning incomes above the poverty line. We found that Puerto Ricans and whites that expected to attain a bachelor's degree or more and that reached a higher level of math are significantly more likely to enroll in four-year and two-year colleges or universities. Puerto Ricans and whites with higher standardized test scores are more likely to enroll in four-year but not two-year colleges. Puerto Ricans from affluent contexts are more likely than those from less affluent areas to attend four-year colleges and earn incomes above poverty. White and Puerto Rican females are more likely to be in poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous contextual analyses of recidivism are limited by a focus on traditional disadvantage indicators. The authors examine whether those indicators, including poverty, family composition, high school dropout, and unemployment explain disproportionate involvement in serious criminal recidivism among African American relative to White ex-prisoners. Given the fundamental necessity of finding employment after release, the authors move beyond traditional measures and investigate the availability of low-skill employment opportunity in the industries that prior research suggests are most likely to hire ex-prisoners (retail and manufacturing). To address the issue, the authors collected and geo-coded data for a representative sample of 1,568 Ohio ex-prisoners released on community supervision during the first six months of 1999. Contextual analysis reveals that race difference in serious recidivism is explained by low-skill employment opportunity in manufacturing and that it is contingent on levels of neighborhood disadvantage and unemployment. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract: Although stress is often hypothesized to contribute to the effects of neighborhoods on health, very few studies have investigated associations of neighborhood characteristics with stress biomarkers. This study helps address the gap in the literature by examining whether neighborhood characteristics are associated with cortisol profiles. Analyses were based on data from the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis Stress study, which collected multiple measures of salivary cortisol over three days on a population based sample of approximately 800 adults. Multilevel models with splines were used to examine associations of cortisol levels with neighborhood poverty, violence, disorder, and social cohesion. Neighborhood violence was significantly associated with lower cortisol values at wakeup and with a slower decline in cortisol over the earlier part of the day, after sociodemographic controls. Associations were weaker and less consistent for neighborhood poverty, social cohesion, and disorder. Results revealed suggestive, though limited, evidence linking neighborhood contexts to cortisol circadian rhythms. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This study examines associations between multiple urban neighborhood characteristics (socioeconomic disadvantage, affluence, and racial/ethnic composition) and depressive symptoms among late middle aged persons and compares findings to those previously obtained for persons age 70 years and older. Survey data are from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), a U.S. national probability sample of noninstitutionalized persons aged 51 to 61 years in 1992. Neighborhoods are 1990 U.S. census tracts. Hierarchical linear regression is used to estimate multilevel models. Depressive symptoms vary significantly across urban neighborhoods among late middle age persons. Neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage is significantly associated with depressive symptoms, net of both individual-level sociodemographic and health variables. However, this association is contingent upon individual-level wealth in that persons with low wealth in the most disadvantaged neighborhoods report the most depressive symptoms. Unlike findings for older adults for whom neighborhood effects appear to be entirely compositional in nature, neighborhood context matters to subgroups of late middle age adults. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the way in which racial/ethnic context influences Latino support for ethnic political causes. Welch et al. argue that feelings of solidarity within the African American community intensify as the size of the African American population in an individual's residential environment increases. We extend this hypothesis to Latinos, while also considering how other scholars have hypothesized different structural patterns of residence among Latinos to influence their political behavior . We also consider how higher levels of in-group heterogeneity within the Latino community might complicate this relationship. These hypotheses are tested using data from the 1999 Harvard/ Kaiser/Washington Post National Survey of Latinos. We find that higher levels of segregation between Anglos and Latinos dampen the positive relationship between Latino group size and participation in ethnic political causes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This review considers that aspect of the voluminous trust literature that deals with race. After discussing the social conditions within which trust becomes relevant and outlining the distinctive contours of the three most common conceptualizations of trust—generalized, particularized, and strategic—I elaborate on the extent and nature of ethnoracial trust differences and provide an overview of the explanations for these differences. Ethnoracial differences in generalized trust are attributed to historical and contemporary discrimination, neighborhood context, and ethnoracial socialization. The consequences for the radius-of-trust problem are discussed with regard to particularized trust. And ethnoracial differences in strategic trust are located in structures of trustworthiness—such as social closure—and reputational concerns. I end the review with a brief discussion of social and economic consequences for trust gaps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neighborhood context could condition voting decisions, but systematic investigation of whether (how) the traits of a given locale shape individual voting decisions is sparse. We explore the possibility that local partisan balance affects turnout and the use of convenience voting in particular. Using comprehensive registered-voter lists from four swing states in the 2002 and 2006 elections, we find an intriguing asymmetry: Republican registrants are usually sensitive to partisan context, whereas Democrats are not. Republican election-day turnout rates generally decrease with the proportion of partisan registrants that are Democratic in the area. This demobilization is only sporadically counterbalanced by greater use of convenience voting. In contrast, Democrats exhibit less systematic patterns. In many cases, there are seemingly perverse effects, wherein Democratic turnout rates fall with growing Democratic registration advantages. The asymmetry may be driven by differences in the competitiveness of elections in areas with notable imbalances in partisan registration. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study examined an ecological perspective on the development of antisocial behavior during adolescence, examining direct, additive, and interactive effects of child and both parenting and community factors in relation to youth problem behavior. To address this goal, the authors examined early adolescent dispositional qualities as predictors of boys' antisocial behavior within the context of parents' knowledge of adolescent activities and neighborhood dangerousness. Antisocial behavior was examined using a multimethod latent construct that included self-reported delinquency, symptoms of conduct disorder, and court petitions in a sample of 289 boys from lower socioeconomic status backgrounds who were followed longitudinally from early childhood through adolescence. Results demonstrated direct and additive findings for child prosociality, daring, and negative emotionality, which were qualified by interactions between daring and neighborhood dangerousness, and between prosociality and parental knowledge. The findings have implications for preventive intervention approaches that address the interplay of dispositional and contextual factors to prevent delinquent behavior in adolescence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Few studies have explored how participant socioeconomic position (SEP) and gender is related to perceptions of the pathways connecting neighborhood influences and mental well-being. This research used the concept mapping method, an intensive structured conceptualization process that produces pictorial views of how concepts are connected and interrelated. Thirty-six low and non-low SEP men and women from Toronto, Canada participated in the concept mapping sessions. One hundred and twenty unique neighborhood characteristics were felt to be related to mental well-being and those items were grouped into six distinct clusters. Notable differences in cluster importance by participant SEP status were found. While no overall differences were observed for males verses females, further stratification by both participant SEP and gender suggested that gendered perceptions are not uniform. Participant-created diagrams illustrated how the cluster domains are related to each other and to good mental well-being. These findings are important for uncovering the mechanisms by which neighborhoods differentially affect the mental health of residents from different SEPs and genders. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The primary purpose of this study is to assess the relative effects of race and class, at both individual and neighborhood levels, on public satisfaction with police. Using hierarchical linear modeling on 1,963 individuals nested within 66 neighborhoods, this study analyzes how individual-level variables, including race, class, age, gender, victimization and contact with police, and neighborhood-level factors, including racial composition, concentrated disadvantage, residential mobility and violent crime rate, influence residents' satisfaction with police. The results from the individual-level analysis indicate that both race and class are equally important predictors. African Americans and lower-class people tend to be less satisfied with police. The significant effects of race and class, however, disappear when neighborhood-level characteristics are considered simultaneously. Neighborhood racial composition affects satisfaction with police, with residents in predominately White and racially mixed neighborhoods having more favorable attitudes than those in predominately African American communities. Further analyses reveal that African Americans in economically advantaged neighborhoods are less likely than Whites in the same kind of neighborhoods to be satisfied with police, whereas African Americans and Whites in disadvantaged communities hold similar levels of satisfaction with police. Implications for future research and policy are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN), neighborhood and individual-level predictors of secondary exposure to violence were assessed. Secondary exposure to violence is defined as witnessing and/or hearing violent acts, as opposed to being a victim of violence directly. A substantial amount of between neighborhood variance was accounted for by individual-level variables including gender, race/ethnicity, age, low self-control, and prior delinquent involvement. At the neighborhood level, concentrated disadvantage and immigrant concentration were both related to exposure to secondary violence. Specifically, children and adolescents living in more disadvantaged contexts witness and hear violence at higher rates than those living in less disadvantaged contexts. Also, those living in areas with a higher concentration of immigrants are exposed to secondary violence at higher rates than those living in areas with a lower concentration of immigrants. Finally, youth services within neighborhoods served as a protective factor against exposure. Results suggest a need to target multiple neighborhood and individual correlates simultaneously to reduce secondary violence exposure among children and adolescents. Directions for future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study examined contextual influences on the relationship between racial discrimination (individual, cultural, and collective/institutional) and psychological well-being. Two hundred and fifty two African American adolescents (46% male and 54% female, average age = 16) completed measures of racial discrimination, self-esteem, depressive symptoms and life satisfaction. Archival information regarding the racial/ethnic composition of the participants’ neighborhoods and schools was used and increased school diversity was linked to increased perceptions of cultural discrimination. Regardless of school and neighborhood diversity, high perceptions of collective/institutional discrimination were linked to lower self-esteem for students in high diversity settings. Further, high levels of collective/institutional discrimination were associated with lower life satisfaction for African American youth in low diversity settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of the present study was to determine whether the effect of impulsive and callous personality traits on delinquent behavior varied across neighborhood context in a population-based, statewide sample of 85,000 Iowa schoolchildren ages 10-19. Two previous studies examining the association between impulsivity and delinquency across disadvantaged and affluent neighborhoods have yielded contrasting findings. Results of the present study suggested a robust moderating effect of neighborhood context on personality risk for delinquency. The relation between impulsivity and delinquency was greater in neighborhoods low in collective efficacy compared to neighborhoods high in collective efficacy. A similar interaction was found for callous personality traits, indicating the consistency of the moderating effect of neighborhood context on personality risk for delinquency. Gender differences were also examined, and results were replicated in a holdout sample. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on four waves of the Americans' Changing Lives Study, we examine the contributions of individual and neighborhood socioeconomic status to explain racial disparities in self-rated health trajectories over time, among Black and White older adults in the United States. Primary results of three-level growth curve analyses of self-rated health change, and multinomial logistic regression of mortality and attrition, indicate that (1) racial and socioeconomic disparities in health persist into old age, (2) Black older adults have greater declines in self-rated health over time than White older adults, and these disparities are explained by individual and neighborhood socioeconomic status (SES), (3) individual and neighborhood SES contribute to persisting self-rated health disparities at older ages, but may not contribute significantly to further declines in self-rated health at older ages, (4) Black disadvantage in mortality exists at older ages, and persists net of individual and neighborhood SES, and (5) individual SES is a significant predictor of 16-year mortality among older adults. Our results suggest that we should continue to be concerned about the existence and persistence of racial and socioeconomic disparities in self-rated health and mortality throughout old age, and the contribution of individual and neighborhood socioeconomic context in perpetuating these disparities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior research on traffic citation practices has focused largely on the influence of situational factors on officer behavior. Recent research, however, has called for a more contextualized framework for studying traffic enforcement activities. Using multilevel and spatial modeling procedures, the current study examined the role that both immediate and surrounding neighborhood characteristics played on citation issuance within a large, metropolitan department. Findings indicated that neighborhood structural characteristics were significantly related to the number of citations written during traffic encounters, independent of situational factors. Furthermore, the effect of a neighborhood's racial composition on citation issuance extended beyond the immediate neighborhood. The results lend further support to the larger body of research highlighting the importance of neighborhood context on officer behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research on educational aspirations has focused almost exclusively on micro-level predictors of educational aspirations. Notably absent from these studies are measures reflecting the neighborhood context in which adolescents live. Drawing on Wilson's theory of neighborhood effects, the present study examines the extent to which neighborhood structural disadvantage predicts college aspirations among African American adolescents. The results show that concentrated neighborhood disadvantage exerts a significant influence on college aspirations, even when accounting for the micro-level context of adolescents. Overall, the findings suggest that living in a disadvantaged context lowers college aspirations among African American adolescents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study assesses an integrated control model to account for adolescent violent behavior. Neighborhood context is hypothesized to reduce informal social control mechanisms, thus affecting violent behavior primarily through informal social controls. These informal social controls are taken from social bond theory and self-control theory. Youth residing in disorganized neighborhoods, having weak social bonds, and reporting a lack of self-control should also be more likely to associate with groups having deviant definitions. The model hypothesizes that adolescent violent behaviors result from weakened social controls due to the environment in which they reside. This hypothesis is tested within the context of a full structural equations model, and it is only partially supported as little of the effect of neighborhood disorganization on violence is empirically channeled through the informal social control measures. Overall, the results indicate that, at least in these data, social disorganization and control theories mostly operate independently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study sought to define neighborhood context by examining relationships among data from city-level administrative databases at the level of the census block group. The present neighborhood investigation included 1,801 block groups comprising a large, northeastern metropolitan area. Common factor analyses and multistage, hierarchical cluster analyses yielded two dimensions (i.e., Social Stress, Structural Danger) and two typologies (i.e., Racial Composition, Property Structure Composition) of neighborhood context. Simultaneous multiple regression analyses revealed small but statistically significant associations between neighborhood variables and academic outcomes for public school kindergarten children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite scholarly interest in determining how exposure to disagreeable political ideas influences political participation, existing research supports few firm conclusions. This paper argues that these varied findings stem from an implicit model of contextual influence that fails to account for the indirect effect of aggregate social contexts. A model of contextual influence is outlined which implies that the neighborhood partisan context moderates the effect of political disagreement in social networks on campaign participation. The evidence shows that network disagreement demobilizes people who are the political minority in their neighborhood, but has no influence on people in the majority. When viewed together, these findings indicate that a person’s relationship to the broader political environment sets distinctive network processes in motion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors extended Elijah Anderson's "code of the street" thesis to explain victimization among a longitudinal sample of 720 African American adolescents from 259 neighborhoods. Specifically, the authors assessed whether the street code promotes greater safety or aggravates the risk for victimization. Anderson portrayed the code of the street, which encourages individuals to appear aggressive and tough, as an adaptation necessary for safely functioning in a disadvantaged, high-crime community. He theorized that adopting the street code promotes respect among one's peers and would-be attackers, thereby increasing one's safety against victimization. The authors found no support for the idea that adopting the street code reduces victimization. Instead, their findings suggest that individuals who adopt the street code have higher levels of victimization. Furthermore, adopting the street code exacerbates the risk for victimization beyond what would be the case from living in a dangerous and disorganized neighborhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers studying the race–violence relationship have tended to focus on either structural or cultural explanations. Although both explanations are important, they tend to be incomplete. We draw on Anderson’s “code of the street” thesis, which combines structural and cultural explanations to explain the high rates of violence among African American adolescents. Anderson argues that the street code, which supports the use of violence, is a cultural adaptation to negative neighborhood structural conditions, as well as family characteristics and racial discrimination. Using two waves of data from 720 African American adolescents from 259 neighborhoods, we investigated whether neighborhood context, family type, and discrimination influenced adoption of the street code. We also assessed whether the street code mediated the effects of neighborhood context, family characteristics, and racial discrimination on violent delinquency. Consistent with Anderson’s hypotheses, neighborhood structural characteristics, living in a street family, and discrimination significantly predicted adopting the street code. Moreover, the street code mediated about one fifth of neighborhood effects on violent delinquency, about one fifth of the effect of racial discrimination, and about 4 percent of the effect of family characteristics on violent delinquency. Overall, the results suggest that neighborhood context, family characteristics, and racial discrimination directly influence adopting the street code, and partially influence violence indirectly through the street code. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior studies of recidivism have focused almost exclusively on individual-level characteristics of offenders and their offenses to explore the correlates of reoffending. Notably absent from these studies are measures reflecting the neighborhood contexts in which individuals live. The current research addresses this shortcoming. Using data on a sample of ex-offenders in Multnomah County, Oregon (Portland and surrounding area) in conjunction with 2000 census data, we answer two questions. First, which individual-level factors influence rates of recidivism? Second, to what extent does neighborhood socioeconomic status account for variation in the reoffending behavior of ex-prisoners that is not explained by their individual-level characteristics? We find that those who return to disadvantaged neighborhoods recidivate at a greater rate while those who return to resource rich or affluent communities recidivate at a lesser rate, controlling for individual-level factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Blacks and Latinos have higher levels of offending than Whites for violent crimes. Researchers have examined a range of explanations that primarily focus on race and have only begun to consider how macro contexts influence individual levels of violence. This study contributes to this literature by including both race and ethnicity, and by examining the role of social psychological processes in mediating the impact of neighborhood contexts on violence. Using the Add Health data, I demonstrate the importance of the neighborhood context, socioeconomic status, and social psychological processes in explaining the relationship between race, ethnicity and violence. Having witnessed and been victimized by violence is by far the most important social psychological process in explaining this relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Racial and social class differences in rates of preterm birth and other adverse outcomes are among the most widely recognized and least well-understood phenomena in the study of reproductive health. Individual-level characteristics have failed to account for such gradients. Recently, researchers have begun to argue that health in general and reproductive outcomes specifically are rooted in social inequalities. One area of such inequality may be residential segregation and the associated race/ethnic differences in exposure to adverse neighborhood conditions. We review the empiric data that examine the association between neighborhood conditions and reproductive health. We also review the major challenges that researchers face when trying to incorporate neighborhood-level variables into studies of health outcomes. Our goal is to stimulate further research that simultaneously considers social, economic, and biologic determinants of reproductive health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines research investigating the effects of neighborhood context on the onset and persistence of early-starting antisocial pathways across middle and late childhood. The review begins by presenting theory and research mapping the early-starting developmental pathway. Next, sociologically and psychologically based investigations linking neighborhood context and early antisocial behavior are examined, in order to posit and evaluate the effects of community economic disadvantage, exposure to neighborhood violence, and involvement with neighborhood-based deviant peer groups on the development of antisocial behavior. It is suggested that middle childhood may represent a critical developmental period during which children are at heightened risk for neighborhood-based effects on antisocial behavior problems. Key methodological issues are addressed, and recommendations for future research integrating developmental pathways and neighborhood theory and research are advanced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: In the United States, Black females are burdened by more aggressive subtypes and increased mortality from breast cancer compared to non-Hispanic (NH) White females. Institutional racism may contribute to these inequities. We aimed to characterize the association between home mortgage discrimination, a novel measure of institutional racism, and incidence of Luminal A and triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) subtypes among NH Black and NH White females in California metropolitan areas., Methods: We merged data from the California Cancer Registry on females aged 20 + diagnosed with primary invasive breast cancer between 2006 and 2015 with a census tract-level index of home mortgage lending bias measuring the odds of mortgage loan denial for Black versus White applicants, generated from the 2007-2013 Home Mortgage Disclosure Act database. Poisson regression estimated cross-sectional associations of census tract-level racial bias in mortgage lending with race/ethnicity- and Luminal A and TNBC-specific incidence rate ratios, adjusting for neighborhood confounders., Results: We identified n = 102,853 cases of Luminal A and n = 15,528 cases of TNBC over the study period. Compared to NH Whites, NH Black females had higher rates of TNBC, lower rates of Luminal A breast cancer, and lived in census tracts with less racial bias in home mortgage lending. There was no evidence of association between neighborhood racial bias in mortgage lending at the time of diagnosis and either subtype among either racial/ethnic group., Conclusion: Future research should incorporate residential history data with measures of institutional racism to improve estimation and inform policy interventions., (© 2022. The Author(s).)

Asian Americans are the fastest growing and fastest aging U.S. population, and occupy both extremes of socioeconomic and health indices. Using the 2016 NYCgov dataset, multilevel logistic regression analyses were conducted to examine the relationship of poverty, acculturation and neighborhood-level variables with disability for different ethnic groups of Asian older adults (Chinese, South Asian, Filipino, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese) in New York City. Findings indicated that South Asian older adults had higher odds for disability compared to other ethnic groups. Living in a neighborhood with higher percentages of persons of the same ethnicity was protective for Chinese older adults only. There is an important opportunity for interprofessional collaborations through education, awareness, screening and intervening to enhance systems of care for Asian older adults. Social workers can play a pivotal role in providing key linkages to form interprofessional solutions and shared efforts to address the needs of this understudied and under-resourced population. Future research is needed to better understand how ethnic enclaves are defined, and how they can benefit different ethnic groups of vulnerable Asian older adults.