Coming and going: Explaining the effects of residential and school mobility on adolescent delinquency Joseph Gasper a,b, * , Stefanie DeLuca a , Angela Estacion c a Department of Sociology, Johns Hopkins University, 533 Mergenthaler Hall, 3400 N. Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 21218, United States b Westat, 1600 Research Boulevard, Rockville, MD 20850, United States c Academy for Educational Development, Center for Educational Research, Evaluation, and Technology, 1825 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20009, United States article info Article history: Available online xxxx Keywords: Mobility Delinquency Substance use Adolescence Random effects abstract Over the past half century, a large body of theoretical and empirical work in sociology and other social sciences has emphasized the negative consequences of mobility for human development in general, and youth outcomes in particular. In criminology, decades of research have documented a link between residential mobility and crime at both the macro and micro levels. At the micro level, mobility is associated with delinquency, substance use, and other deviant behaviors among adolescents. However, it is possible that the relation- ship between mobility and delinquency may be due to selection on pre-existing differences between mobile and non-mobile youth in their propensity for delinquency, and prior stud- ies have not adequately addressed this issue. Specifically, the families that are most likely to move are also the most disadvantaged and may be characterized by dynamics and pro- cesses that are conducive to the development of delinquency and problem behavior in their children. This study uses data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 to assess the impact of residential and school mobility between the ages of 12 and 17 on delinquency and substance use. Random effects models control for selection on both observed and unobserved differences. Results show that mobility and delinquency are indeed spuriously related. Implications for future research on mobility and outcomes are discussed. Ó 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Residential mobility and its consequences for human development have captured the attention of social scientists for more than a half century. However, opinions have cycled about whether residential mobility has positive or negative impli- cations for the life course. While residential mobility had been historically considered a natural consequence of social mobil- ity and increased economic opportunity (Kopf, 1977), by the early 20th century, mobility was seen as indicative of a character flaw—the inability to maintain social relationships in one’s community. Research on social ecology in Chicago prompted concerns that residential transience was contributing to problems of urban decay, as studies noted associations between residential mobility and mental hospital admissions, juvenile delinquency, and crime in city neighborhoods (Faris and Dunham, 1939; Henry and Short, 1954; Shaw and McKay, 1942). With government funding aimed at ‘‘curing mobility”, Peter Rossi carried out a groundbreaking study in Philadelphia that overturned that common belief that mobile families are ‘‘pathological” and suggested that families move instead because of changing needs at different points in the life cycle, which lead to a need for ‘‘housing adjustment” (Rossi, 1955). Rossi showed that people moved to bigger homes and better neigh- borhoods as part of the broad pattern of upward economic mobility in the post Word War II era. This was consistent with 0049-089X/$ - see front matter Ó 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ssresearch.2009.08.009 * Corresponding author. Address: 1600 Research Boulevard, Rockville, MD 20850-3129, United States. E-mail addresses: jgasper@jhu.edu, josephgasper@westat.com (J. Gasper). Social Science Research xxx (2009) xxx–xxx Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Social Science Research journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ssresearch ARTICLE IN PRESS Please cite this article in press as: Gasper, J., et al. Coming and going: Explaining the effects of residential and school mobility on adolescent delinquency. Social Sci. Res. (2009), doi:10.1016/j.ssresearch.2009.08.009