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Young people's life chances can be predicted by characteristics of their neighbourhood1. Children growing up in disadvantaged neighbourhoods exhibit worse physical and mental health and suffer poorer educational and economic outcomes than children growing up in advantaged neighbourhoods. Increasing recognition that aspects of social inequalities tend, in fact, to be geographical inequalities2-5 is stimulating research and focusing policy interest on the role of place in shaping health, behaviour and social outcomes. Where neighbourhood effects are causal, neighbourhood-level interventions can be effective. Where neighbourhood effects reflect selection of families with different characteristics into different neighbourhoods, interventions should instead target families or individuals directly. To test how selection may affect different neighbourhood-linked problems, we linked neighbourhood data with genetic, health and social outcome data for >7,000 European-descent UK and US young people in the E-Risk and Add Health studies. We tested selection/concentration of genetic risks for obesity, schizophrenia, teen pregnancy and poor educational outcomes in high-risk neighbourhoods, including genetic analysis of neighbourhood mobility. Findings argue against genetic selection/concentration as an explanation for neighbourhood gradients in obesity and mental health problems. By contrast, modest genetic selection/concentration was evident for teen pregnancy and poor educational outcomes, suggesting that neighbourhood effects for these outcomes should be interpreted with care.

BackgroundChildren with conduct problems that persist into adulthood are at increased risk for future behavioral, health, and social problems. However, the longer term public service usage among these children has not been fully documented. To aid public health and intervention planning, adult service usage across criminal justice, health care, and social welfare domains is compared among all individuals from a representative cohort who followed different conduct problem trajectories from childhood into adulthood.MethodsParticipants are from the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study, a prospective, representative cohort of consecutive births (N = 1,037) from April 1972 to March 1973 in Dunedin, New Zealand. Regression analyses were used to compare levels of public service usage up to age 38, gathered via administrative and electronic medical records, between participants who displayed distinct subtypes of childhood conduct problems (low, childhood-limited, adolescent-onset, and life-course persistent).ResultsChildren exhibiting life-course persistent conduct problems used significantly more services as adults than those with low levels of childhood conduct problems. Although this group comprised only 9.0% of the population, they accounted for 53.3% of all convictions, 15.7% of emergency department visits, 20.5% of prescription fills, 13.1% of injury claims, and 24.7% of welfare benefit months. Half of this group (50.0%) also accrued high service use across all three domains of criminal justice, health, and social welfare services, as compared to only 11.3% of those with low conduct problems (OR = 7.27, 95% CI = 4.42-12.0).ConclusionsConduct problems in childhood signal high future costs in terms of service utilization across multiple sectors. Future evaluations of interventions aimed at conduct problems should also track potential reductions in health burden and service usage that stretch into midlife.

Pubertal development is a nonlinear process progressing from prepubescent beginnings through biological, physical, and psychological changes to full sexual maturity. To tether theoretical concepts of puberty with sophisticated longitudinal, analytical models capable of articulating pubertal development more accurately, we used nonlinear mixed-effects models to describe both the timing and tempo of pubertal development in the sample of 364 White boys and 373 White girls measured across 6 years as part of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development. Individual differences in timing and tempo were extracted with models of logistic growth. Differential relations emerged for how boys' and girls' timing and tempo of development were related to physical characteristics (body mass index, height, and weight) and psychological outcomes (internalizing problems, externalizing problems, and risky sexual behavior). Timing and tempo are associated in boys but not girls. Pubertal timing and tempo are particularly important for predicting psychological outcomes in girls but only sparsely related to boys' psychological outcomes. Results highlight the importance of considering the nonlinear nature of puberty and expand the repertoire of possibilities for examining important aspects of how and when pubertal processes contribute to development. (Contains 4 footnotes, 7 tables, and 4 figures.)

To test a proposition central to J. Belsky, L. Steinberg, and P. Draper's (1991) evolutionary theory of socialization--that pubertal maturation plays a role in linking early rearing experience with adolescent sexual risk taking (i.e., frequency of sexual behavior) and, perhaps, other risk taking (e.g., alcohol, drugs, delinquency)--the authors subjected longitudinal data on 433 White, 62 Black, and 31 Hispanic females to path analysis. Results showed (a) that greater maternal harshness at 54 months predicted earlier age of menarche; (b) that earlier age of menarche predicted greater sexual (but not other) risk taking; and (c) that maternal harshness exerted a significant indirect effect, via earlier menarche, on sexual risk taking (i.e., greater harshness [right arrow] earlier menarche [right arrow] greater sexual risk taking) but only a direct effect on other risk taking. Results are discussed in terms of evolutionary perspectives on human development and reproductive strategy, and future directions for research are outlined. (Contains 2 tables and 1 figure.)

Role reversal is a relationship disturbance in which a parent looks to a child to meet a parent's need for comfort, parenting, intimacy or play, and the child attempts to meet these needs. The current study examined, within a developmental psychopathology framework, the effect of father and mother role reversal with toddlers on the development of attention problems, externalizing symptoms, internalizing symptoms, and social problems in kindergarten. In a normative sample, N = 57, role reversal was assessed in an observational paradigm, and teachers rated behavior problems. Father role reversal predicted attention problems and externalizing symptoms, whereas mother role reversal predicted social problems. Gender was an important moderator such that father role reversal predicted social problems for boys and mother role reversal predicted social problems for girls. The importance of a developmental psychopathology perspective, the role of fathers, and implications for the development of diagnosable disorders and for preventive interventions are discussed.

The study identifies the patterns and causal factors of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) of youth followed from the ages of 9 to 15 years. Findings indicate significant decrease in measured physical activity between the ages of 9 and 15 years.

This article examines factors associated with surrogate decision-making regarding life-sustaining terminal care for close friends and relatives. Findings indicate that surrogate decision-makers' predictions regarding the end-of-life care preferences of another individual are significantly influenced by their own treatment preferences.