Stressful events and individual beliefs as correlates of economic disadvantage and aggression among urban children.

Abstract

This study examined 3 factors that were hypothesized to increase risk for aggression among urban children: economic disadvantage, stressful events, and individual beliefs. Participants were 1,935 African American, Hispanic, and White elementary-school boys and girls assessed over a 2-year period. The relation between individual poverty and aggression was only significant for the White children, with significant interactions between individual and community poverty for the other 2 ethnic groups. With a linear structural model to predict aggression from the stress and beliefs variables, individual poverty predicted stress for African American children and predicted beliefs supporting aggression for Hispanic children. For all ethnic groups, both stress and beliefs contributed significantly to the synchronous prediction of aggression, and for the Hispanic children, the longitudinal predictions were also significant. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for preventive interventions in multiethnic, inner-city communities.