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 Americ an, Hispanic, and White elementary-school boys and girls assessed over a 2-year period. The relation between individual poverty and aggressi on was only significant for the White children, with significant inter actions between individual and community poverty for the other 2 ethni c groups. With a linear structural model to predict aggression from th e stress and beliefs variables, individual poverty predicted stress fo r African American children and predicted beliefs supporting aggressio n for Hispanic children. For all ethnic groups, both stress and belief s contributed significantly to the synchronous prediction of aggressio n, and for the Hispanic children, the longitudinal predictions were al so significant. The findings are discussed in terms of their implicati ons for preventive interventions in multiethnic, inner-city communitie s.