Neighborhoods, Schools, and Adolescent Violence: Ecological Relative Deprivation, Disadvantage Saturation, or Cumulative Disadvantage?

Neighborhood and school socioeconomic “disadvantage” are consequential for youth violence perpetration. This study considers alternative ecological cumulative disadvantage, disadvantage saturation, and relative deprivation hypotheses regarding how the association between neighborhood disadvantage and violence varies by levels of socioeconomic disadvantage in schools. These hypotheses are tested with data from Wave I of Add Health (n = 15,581; 51% Female; Age mean = 15.67, SD = 1.74). Cross-classified multilevel Rasch models are used to estimate the interaction between neighborhood and school disadvantage in predicting adolescent violence. Consistent with the ecological relative deprivation hypothesis, results indicate that the association between neighborhood disadvantage and violence is most pronounced among youth attending low-disadvantage schools. Further, youth exposed to high-disadvantage neighborhoods and low-disadvantage schools tend to be at the greatest risk of perpetrating violence. These patterns are evident among both males and females, and particularly among older youth and those from low-parent education families. This study motivates future investigations considering how adolescents’ experiences beyond the neighborhood shape how they engage with and experience the effects of their neighborhoods.