NCJ Number
217382
Journal
Journal of Quantitative Criminology Volume: 23 Issue: 1 Dated: March 2007 Pages: 23-39
Date Published
March 2007
Length
17 pages
Annotation
Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97), this study re-examined the empirical relationship between household economic resources and youths' criminal behavior.
Abstract
This study found a significant relationship between household economic resources and youth criminal involvement, especially for White youth. The difference in criminal participation between youths whose family incomes differed by two or more quintiles of the income distribution was apparently greater than or equal to the difference in criminal participation between genders. The study further found that the relationship between household economic resources and youth criminal participation was restricted to serious crimes. More trivial offenses apparently had little relationship to household economic resources. Future research should examine how, and to what extent, household economic resources directly influence a youth's criminal activity, as well as the extent to which household economic resources may simply correlate with other household characteristics that more directly influence youth criminality. The NLSY97 is particularly suited for studying the relationship between youth criminal participation and household economic resources for a number of reasons. First, the sampled groups were large, consisting of over 8,000 respondents. Second, the NLSY97 sample was designed to be representative of all American youth born between 1980 and 1984. Third, questions about criminal activity were asked through a self-administered questionnaire via a laptop computer rather than through a written survey or a face-to-face interview. Reported household income from 1997 (measured in units of $10,000) was used, since that was the only year in which such information was collected directly from a parent of the responding youth. 4 tables, 2 figures, and 32 references