Effects of Neighborhood and School Environments on Transitions to First Sexual Intercourse

Using the 1993 wave of the Philadelphia Teen Survey, the authors estimated multilevel binary response models showing how much census tracts and schools, separately and jointly, affect youths' sexual initiation. They found that neighborhood effects on sexual behavior exist only to the extent that they determine the type of school an adolescent attends; school effects are primarily a function of racial composition and school type; and school types are associated, to a large extent, with school-level behavioral norms. The results suggest that previous studies may have overestimated the magnitude of neighborhood effects and that schools' normative environments may merit greater attention in research on youths' nonacademic outcomes