Social Anatomy of Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Violence

We analyzed key individual, family, and neighborhood factors to assess competing hypotheses regarding racial/ethnic gaps in perpetrating violence. From 1995 to 2002, we collected 3 waves of data on 2974 participants aged 8 [corrected] to 25 years living in 180 Chicago neighborhoods, augmented by a separate community survey of 8782 Chicago residents. The odds of perpetrating violence were 85% higher for Blacks compared with Whites, whereas Latino-perpetrated violence was 10% lower. Yet the majority of the Black-White gap (over 60%) and the entire Latino-White gap were explained primarily by the marital status of parents, immigrant generation, and dimensions of neighborhood social context. The results imply that…

• JD
  John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
• NI
  National Institutes of Health
• NI
  National Institute of Mental Health
• NI
  National Institute of Justice