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

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.Violent crime rates in the United States in the early 1990s are the highest in several decades.This latest upswing is largely accounted for by a sharp increase in violence among youths under age 18.For example, during the 1980s, arrests for serious violent crimes rose about 5% for those over 18, compared with a 60% rise for those under age 18 (Uniform Crime Reports, 1992).This escalation has placed violence prevention at the forefront of scientific and public concern, leading to a proliferation of interventions for children and youths (for recent reviews see Guerra, Tolan,