Examining Gene-Environment Interactions Between Antisocial Behavior, Neighborhood Disadvantage, and Collective Efficacy

The association between neighborhood context and antisocial behavior has been the focus of a considerable amount of criminological research over the past 50 years. During this time, numerous studies have found significant associations between neighborhood disadvantage and youth antisocial behavior. This body of evidence created the foundation for several neighborhood-level theories of crime and delinquency. One neighborhood-level theoretical framework that has received perhaps the most attention within criminology in recent years is collective efficacy theory. Although prior research has revealed that differences in collective efficacy explain differences in crime across neighborhood context, collective efficacy and other neighborhood-level risk factors only account for a fraction of the variance in youth antisocial behavior. One explanation for this finding could be that previous neighborhood-level research on neighborhood disadvantage and collective efficacy has not taken into account the effects of genetic factors, which have been found to explain a considerable amount of variation in antisocial behavior. Using longitudinal kinship data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth-Child and Young Adult Supplement, this study aims to assess whether and to what extent neighborhood disadvantage and collective efficacy moderate latent genetic influences on variation in antisocial behavior during childhood and adolescence. Findings from a series of biometric decomposition models show that exposure to neighborhood disadvantage and collective efficacy condition the influence of genetic and environmental effects on antisocial behavioral development across different stages of childhood and adolescence. Implications of these Gene x Neighborhood Environment findings for contemporary neighborhood-level theory and neighborhood-level criminological research are discussed.