“Keeping up with the Joneses?” How Perceived SES Moderates the Relationship between Economic Problems and Instrumental Crime

ABSTRACT

The present study examined the moderating effects of perceived socioeconomic status (SES) on the relationship between economic problems and instrumental crime. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (N = 14,754), results suggested that the effect of economic problems on crime exhibited an inverted-U-shaped curve. The effect was moderated by perceived SES such that those with the highest levels of perception reported the highest involvement in crime when experiencing a few economic problems. Conversely, high perceived SES among those experiencing excessive economic problems acted as a protective factor in criminal involvement.

Acknowledgments

I thank the Editor and anonymous reviewer for helpful feedback on an earlier version of this article. I also thank Dr. Danielle Kuhl and Dr. Raymond Swisher for advice on earlier drafts.

Funding

This research uses data from Add Health, a program project directed by Kathleen Mullan Harris and designed by J. Richard Udry, Peter S. Bearman, and Kathleen Mullan Harris at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and funded by grant P01-HD31921 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, with cooperative funding from 23 other federal agencies and foundations. Special acknowledgment is due Ronald R. Rindfuss and Barbara Entwisle for assistance in the original design. Information on how to obtain the Add Health data files is available on the Add Health website. No direct support was received from grant P01-HD31921 for this analysis.

Notes

¹ For a detailed list of the occupational classification, see http://www.bls.gov/soc/

² Significance tests employed an analysis of variance (ANOVA) with Tukey’s multiple comparison of means.

³ The measure of economic problems is interpreted with the partial derivate in mind, β1+2β2X, where β1 is the linear estimate and β2 is the departure from linearity.

⁴ Sensitivity analyses (specifically the intra-class correlation) pertaining to a multilevel approach suggested that clustering at Wave I accounted for only a very small (and insignificant) proportion of the variation in crime (0.2%). Also, given the movement of respondents over time, clustering at Wave IV is negligible with these data.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Christopher R. Dennison

CHRISTOPHER R. DENNISON is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology at Bowling Green State University. His research interests include life-course criminology, social mobility, quantitative methods, and socioeconomic status.