NCJ Number
219203
Journal
Journal of Youth and Adolescence Volume: 36 Issue: 5 Dated: July 2007 Pages: 593-605
Date Published
July 2007
Length
13 pages
Annotation
This study examined whether community poverty amplified the effects of family poverty on juvenile delinquency involvement.
Abstract
The results indicated fairly strong support for the hypothesis that community poverty amplified the negative impact of family poverty on juvenile delinquency involvement. Specifically, it was found that the effect of community poverty became greater as it increased. At high levels of community poverty, the effect of family poverty on delinquency more than doubled. The findings suggest that to some degree previous studies have misspecified the relationship between family poverty and individual delinquency by not taking into account the impact of community poverty. The findings have many implications for crime prevention policy, specifically in reference to considering and targeting the social context in which families and youth live. Programs should specifically target children from high-risk families that reside in extremely poor communities. Future research should no longer consider poverty as only an individual characteristic but should also measure poverty as a community characteristic. Data were drawn from both the National Survey of Children (NSC) and the 1980 U.S. Census. The NSC is a three-wave national panel survey of U.S. children and their families that includes multiple measures of family poverty and developmental outcomes for children. The current analysis focuses on the first 2 waves of data that include responses from 1,423 children and their families. Data were analyzed using ordinary least squares (OLS) regression equations. Tables, figure, references