Exposure to Violence in the Lives of Children in the Global North and South: Links to Socio-Economic Resources as Risk and Protective Factors

• In Event: Contexts of Delinquency, Crime, and Victimization

Abstract

We develop a model of children’s exposure to violence based in the Global North to more fully consider its support and nuances in the Global South, defined here as several countries in Africa (Foster & Brooks-Gunn, 2015). We focus in this paper on the degree of evidence in research to date concerning multi-level socio-economic resources as risk factors for violence exposure but also as sources of protection in children’s lives. These protective factors including education may also prevent connections between violence exposure and subsequent violent behavior. We therefore critically assess research evidence on socio-economic resources as sources of both risk and resilience for children’s violence exposure in both the Global North and South. Our paper builds toward the importance of considering global contexts when investigating exposure to violence in the “stress process” (Pearlin et al. 1981).

Authors

• Holly Foster, Texas A&M

• Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Columbia University