According to the neighborhood effects hypothesis, there is a negative relation between neighborhood wealth and youth’s problem behavior. It is often assumed that there are more problems in deprived neighborhoods, but there are also reports of higher rates of behavioral problems in more affluent neighborhoods. Much of this literature does not take into account relative wealth. Our central question was whether the economic position of adolescents’ families, relative to the neighborhood in which they lived, was related to adolescents’ internalizing and externalizing problem behavior. We used longitudinal data for youth between 12–16 and 16–20 years of age, combined with population register data (N = 926; 55% females). We employ between-within models to account for time-invariant confounders, including parental background characteristics. Our findings show that, for adolescents, moving to a more affluent neighborhood was related to increased levels of depression, social phobia, aggression, and conflict with fathers and mothers. This could be indirect evidence for the relative deprivation mechanism, but we could not confirm this, and we did not find any gender differences. The results do suggest that future research should further investigate the role of individuals’ relative position in their neighborhood in order not to overgeneralize neighborhood effects and to find out for whom neighborhoods matter.

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According to the neighbourhood effects hypothesis, there is a negative relation between neighbourhood wealth and youths’ problem behaviour. It is often assumed that there are more problems in deprived neighbourhoods, but there are also reports of higher rates of behavioural problems in more affluent neighbourhoods. Much of this literature does not take into account relative wealth. Our central question was whether the economic position of adolescents’ families relative to the neighbourhood in which they lived, was related to adolescents’ internalising and externalising problem behaviour. We used longitudinal data for youths between 12-21 years of age, combined with population register data. We employ between-within models to account for time-invariant confounders, including parental background characteristics. Our findings show that for adolescents, moving to a more affluent neighbourhood was related to increased levels of depression, social phobia, aggression, and conflict with father and mother. This could be indirect evidence for the relative deprivation mechanism, but we could not confirm this, and we did not find any gender differences. The results do suggest that future research should further investigate the role of individuals’ relative position in their neighbourhood in order not to overgeneralise neighbourhood effects and to find out for whom neighbourhoods matter.@en

This four-year longitudinal study attempted to test person-environment interaction theory and biological sensitivity theory by assessing whether individuals’ biological stress activity CARAUCg (Cortisol Awakening Response Area Under the Curve with respect to ground) moderates the effects of neighbourhood density on the development of adolescent externalizing problem behaviours. Participants were 358 Dutch adolescents with a mean age of 15 years at the first measurement. Our analyses showed that CARAUCg moderated the effects of neighbourhood density on the level of parent-reported delinquency and aggression and adolescent self-reported delinquency. More specifically, for adolescents with high CARAUCg, higher neighbourhood density significantly predicted higher levels of parent-reported and adolescent self-reported delinquency and aggression, whereas the association was reversed or non-significant for adolescents with low CARAUCg. Our findings suggest that adolescents with different levels of CARAUCg respond differentially to the density of the neighbourhood they live in, supporting for person-environment interaction perspectives and biological sensitivity theory.@en