Street Youth, Gender, Financial Strain, and Crime: Exploring Broidy and Agnew's Extension to General Strain Theory

Abstract

General strain theory posits that adversive circumstances experienced by youths increase the likelihood of criminal behavior. Broidy and Agnew argue that while the underlying process identified in the general strain model will be applicable to both male and female crime different models of strain may be required to highlight gender differences in the underlying process. Utilizing a “high risk” sample of 400 homeless street youths the study examines how socioeconomic strain in the forms of homelessness, monetary dissatisfaction, and relative deprivation may be differentially linked to property and violent crime depending on gender. The conditioning effects of deviant attitudes, deviant peers, attributions, self-efficacy, and self-esteem are also examined. The results reveal few gender differences in the main effects of the different types of strain on crime. There are, however, gender differences in the way the conditioning variables impact the link between forms of strain and crime.

The author acknowledges the financial assistance of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and Queen's University Chancellor's Research Award. The author also thanks Jennifer Robinson for her research assistance and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.

Notes

¹See Agnew 1985 1989 2002; Agnew and White 1992; Agnew et al. 2002; Aseltine et al. 2000; Baron 2004; Baron and Hartnagel 2002; Broidy 2001; Eitle and Turner 2003; Hoffman and Su 1997; Hoffman and Miller 1998; Jang and Johnson 2003 2005; Mazerolle 1998; Mazerolle and Maahs 2000; Mazerolle and Piquero 1997 1998; Mazerolle et al. 2000 2003; Orstowsky and Messner 2005; Paternoster and Mazerolle 1994; Piquero and Sealock 2000 2004.

²See Agnew et al. 2002; Aseltine et al. 2000; Baron 2004; Baron and Hartnagel 2002; Capowich et al. 2001; Hoffman and Miller 1998; Jang and Johnson 2003 2005; Mazerolle and Maahs 2000; Mazerolle et al. 2000; Paternoster and Mazerolle 1994; Robbers, 2004.

³Those who agreed were supplied with informed consent forms outlining study goals and their rights within the interview. Subjects were told they were not obliged to answer any of the questions and could withdraw from the interview at any time. None of the youths exercised this power.

∗∗p sig. 05 two-tailed test.

^a The mean for the standardized variables is 0 with a standard deviation of 1. Ranges for the standardized variables are in brackets

^b The numbers outside parentheses are raw scores, the numbers inside parentheses are the logged values.

⁴The external attribution and self-efficacy measure share conceptual overlap. In fact, both the self-efficacy measure and the external attribution measure are drawn from a scale on alienation (see Roberts 1987). However, Roberts in a confirmatory factor analysis on two different data sets found that the two measures used here load poorly (less than .27 in all cases) as indicators on the concept of powerlessness when entered together, suggesting that they may represent different concepts. The correlation between external attribution and self efficacy was r = − .309 (sig p = .01) for females and r = − .183 (sig. p = .01) for males. Thus, although related they do not appear to be measuring the same thing. The Variance Inflation Factors were examined to ensure that multicollinearity did not degrade the estimates. This review revealed that all factors were under two.

∗Sig .05 one-tailed test.

∗∗Sig .01 one-tailed test.

 + + sig .01 two-tailed test.

z sig .05 one-tailed coefficient comparison test.

⁵Additional analysis revealed that anger did not mediate the effects of the strain variables on property crime. In fact, when anger was added to the financial strain models for males with all the other lower order variables, it specified monetary dissatisfaction as a predictor of property crime.

⁶Additional analysis revealed that anger did not mediate the effects of the strain variables on violent crime.

∗Sig .05 one-tailed test.

∗∗Sig .01 one-tailed test.

z sig .05 one-tailed coefficient comparison test.