Spatial Dynamics of Neighborhood Effects

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This revised application describes a program of research designed to investigate the effects of extra-local contextual conditions-characteristics of communities surrounding the neighborhood of residence-on adolescent and young adult behavior. While the social scientific literature on "neighborhood effects" has grown dramatically over recent years, virtually all studies in this genre have treated neighborhoods as isolated islands, entirely divorced from their broader ecological context. The primary objective of this project is to examine how socioeconomic conditions in geographically-proximate neighborhoods complement and moderate conditions in the neighborhood of residence to influence key events in the adolescent and young adult life course, including dropping out of school, the transition to marriage, and premarital childbearing. Particular attention is given to the ability of extra-local conditions to explain pronounced racial and ethnic differences in these behaviors (as theories of concentrated poverty contend) and variability in the impact of extra-local conditions by age, sex, race and ethnicity, and social class (as suggested by life-course and urban-ecological perspectives). The project applies innovative data-gathering techniques and methods for spatial data analysis to over thirty years of individual- and family-level data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, in conjunction with neighborhood-level data drawn from four decennial U.S. censuses. The analysis will estimate event-history models that include spatially-lagged exogenous variables to capture the influence of socioeconomic and demographic characteristics in geographically-proximal neighborhoods on adolescent and young adult educational and family formation behavior. Relevance to public health: Neighborhood conditions are known to affect many dimensions of public health, and to partly explain racial and ethnic differences in health behaviors and health outcomes. Consequently, understanding more about the nature and operation of these effects is an important scientific and public health objective.