A Neighborhood-Centered Approach to Developmental Contexts: An Application to Sexual Risk-Taking in Adolescence and Young Adulthood

Tara D. Warner, University of Nebraska at Lincoln

Bridging macrosociological life course, place stratification, and social disorganization theories, this study advances a “neighborhood-centered” approach to study a core developmental context in adolescent and young adult behavior. Using four waves of data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), latent class analysis, and growth curve modeling, I identify neighborhood types patterned by the intersection of three components of structural inequality—race/ethnicity, socioeconomic class, and geography—and examine how trajectories of adolescent and young adult sexual activity differ across neighborhood types Results demonstrate the complexity with which indicators of stratification intersect to shape specific neighborhood contexts, and illustrate significant variation in trajectories across neighborhood types—variation heretofore unobserved in neighborhoods research, and largely unexplained by theorized mediators. This approach extends neighborhood effects research, highlighting the social structural forces—embodied in the patterning of a finite set of neighborhood types—that anchor trajectories of risk behaviors in adolescence.