Doctoral Dissertation Research: Low Income Youth and Perceptions of Mortality

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SES-1031612Michele LamontNathan FosseHarvard University As a corrective to the cultural deficit models of inner-city culture, and drawing from more nuanced cultural analyses of the poor, this project examines risk-taking by incorporating low-income men?s perceptions toward their own mortality. The main research questions are: How does belief in imminent mortality inform low-income men's sexual behavior? What are the aspects of low-income men's lives that they draw upon when accounting belief in imminent mortality? and What are the racial and ethnic differences in perceptions of imminent mortality? Using data on belief in mortality from the NLSY97 (National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997) data set, as well as from in-depth interviews with low-income men in Boston, this study provides the first comprehensive study examining the salience and predictive value of belief in imminent mortality on sexual risk taking. In contrast, all previous research has either been cross-sectional or restricted to one geographic state or neighborhood; no research has examined how perceptions of mortality are incorporated into low income men?s subjective experiences of sexuality. In addition, no research has examined racial and ethnic differences in belief in imminent mortality. Preliminary evidence suggests that belief in imminent mortality is predicted by both family socioeconomic background and by youths? race, and that it is a robust predictor of risk-taking. The findings from this project will have relevance for understandings the causes and consequences of urban poverty. The research contributes to understanding racial and socioeconomic disparities in health, in particular the ways in which exposure to violence may increase the propensity to engage in sexual risk. By relying on a risk and resilience framework, this study moves from a ?deficit? model of risk, to one that examines the diversity of behaviors among disadvantaged men, contributing to research on what makes societies and individuals ?successful." This research also informs psychological and demographic studies of health, by incorporating empirically the perspectives of low-income men.