Neighborhood Attainment Processes and Identities as Mediating Mechanisms

• In Event: Trust, Social Networks, and Identity in Context

Abstract

Ecological researchers have long argued that the neighborhood is an important indicator of socioeconomic status attainment (Massey and Denton, 1993; Wilson, 1987). More recently, scholars are linking the macro neighborhood unit to individual decisions, attitudes, and behaviors via persons’ ability to draw on different sources of capital (Sampson and Sharkey 2008). Importantly, this work posits that an individual’s capital is influenced by both past and present neighborhood status. My research draws on these arguments and Add Health data to predict neighborhood attainment in young adulthood as an outcome of prior neighborhood status (during adolescence) and individual psychological capital. I examine the possibility that an individual’s identities, age identity, deviant identity, and victim identity, are mediating mechanisms between one’s adolescent neighborhood socioeconomic status and the adult outcomes of marriage and educational attainment. I hypothesize that, 1) neighborhood advantage leads to higher levels of psychological capital (self-esteem and higher aspirations); 2) neighborhood advantage indirectly influences the normative transitions of marriage and college attainment via its influence on psychological capital; and 3) adult neighborhood advantage is a product of these adult transitions and prior adolescent psychological capital. I employ a series of hierarchical regressions (in HLM) to test these hypothesized longitudinal processes.

Author

• Andrea Krieg, Bowling Green State University