Bridging Disciplinary Boundaries (January 11 - 14, 2007)

The study aims to understand the effects of multiple factors on caregiver-reported behavior problems of adolescents aged 14 to 17. These factors include: (i) family economic resources – income, wealth, home ownership, parents' work hours, parents' education; (ii) family non-economic resources – family structure, parenting behavior, family member criminality; and (iii) neighborhood conditions. It analyzes a national and longitudinal data set: the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and its Child Development Supplement. It accounts for unobserved characteristics with a lagged dependent variable and a fixed effects model.

Behavior problems are found to be significantly associated with heads working fewer hours per year, single parenthood, stricter parental discipline, less parent monitoring, and worse neighborhood conditions. Although family income and criminal history do not significantly affect behavior problems, the results indicate that anti-poverty and anti-crime strategies which also improve job access, revitalize neighborhoods and support families should have favorable effects on adolescent behavior. Programs that improve family relationships and parenting may be most feasible in the short-run. Evaluations of such programs should be conducted to identify which types of programs are the most cost effective. Due to the possibility of education bias in caregivers' reports of behavior, these evaluations and future research should measure behavior problems from multiple respondents. On the other hand, cumulative effects of risk factors suggest the need to tackle multiple risks simultaneously.