Neighborhood Context and the Risk of Childbearing among Metropolitan-Area Black Adolescents

Abstract

The authors examine whether neighborhood racial composition or poverty is the more important predictor of premarital adolescent childbearing among metropolitan-area black people, and how family socioeconomic status moderates these neighborhood influences. They analyze data from a special release of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics that appends census tract information to the individual records of 940 metropolitan black women. Using cluster analysis, they create neighborhood types that reflect the racial and economic composition of neighborhoods where metropolitan the black people live. Compared with living in a racially mixed neighborhood, living in a highly segregated neighborhood is associated with a 50-percent increase in the rate of a premarital first birth, regardless of neighborhood socioeconomic status. Living in a white middle-class neighborhood is associated with lower rates of a premarital first birth for affluent black teens, but has no effect on their less affluent black peers. These findings support the hypothesis that neighborhood racial composition directly influences adolescent childbearing by sealing off participation in mainstream social and economic arenas