A Spatio-Temporal Assessment of Exposure to Neighborhood Violence

Jeffrey M. Timberlake, University of Cincinnati
David S. Kirk, University of Texas at Austin

The past two decades have been marked by a renewed interest in studying the effects of neighborhood settings on various social phenomena like crime and educational attainment, yet the bulk of ‘neighborhood effects’ research examines the impact of neighborhood context cross-sectionally. For this study, we take seriously the notion that there are cumulative consequences of being exposed to deleterious neighborhood conditions. In particular, we focus on the consequences of exposure to neighborhood violence. Instead of examining exposure to violence at a single time point, however, we prospectively assess children's duration of exposure to neighborhood violence. Methodologically, we construct covariate-adjusted increment-decrement period life tables in order to estimate racial and ethnic inequality in the duration of children's exposure to neighborhood violence throughout childhood. Preliminary findings indicate that, compared to their black and Hispanic peers, white children can expect to spend a much longer share of childhood in the lowest crime neighborhoods.