TY  - JOUR
AU  - Case,Anne C.
AU  - Katz,Lawrence F.
TI  - The Company You Keep: The Effects of Family and Neighborhood on Disadvantaged Youths
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 3705
PY  - 1991
Y2  - May 1991
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w3705
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w3705.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Anne Case
367 Wallace Hall
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ 08544
Tel: 609/258-2177
Fax: 609/258-5974
E-Mail: accase@princeton.edu

Lawrence F. Katz
Department of Economics
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA  02138
Tel: 617/495-5148
Fax: 617/613-1245
E-Mail: lkatz@harvard.edu
M2  - featured in NBER digest on 1991-07-01
AB  - We examine the effects of family background variables and neighborhood peers on the behaviors of inner-city youths in a tight labor market using data from the 1989 NBER survey of youths living in low-income Boston neighborhoods. We find that family adult behaviors are strongly related to analogous youth behaviors. The links between the behavior of older family members and youths are important for criminal activity, drug and alcohol use, childbearing out of wedlock, schooling, and church attendance. We also find that the behaviors of neighborhood peers appear to substantially affect youth behaviors in a manner suggestive of contagion models of neighborhood effects. Residence in a neighborhood in which a large proportion of other youths are involved in crime is associated with a substantial increase in an individual's probability of the being involved in crime. Significant neighborhood peer effects are also apparent for drug and alcohol use, church attendance, and the propensity of youths to be out of school and out of work. Our results indicate that family and peer influences both operate in manner such that "like begets like."
ER  -