Neighbourhood Poverty, Work Commitment and Unemployment in Early Adulthood: A Longitudinal Study into the Moderating Effect of Personality

December Neighbourhood Poverty, Work Commitment and Unemployment in Early Adulthood: A Longitudinal Study into the Moderating Effect of Personality Jaap Nieuwenhuis 0 1 2 Rongqin Yu 0 2 Susan Branje 0 2 Wim Meeus 0 2 Pieter Hooimeijer 0 2 0 Current address: Department of Developmental Psychology, Tilburg University , Tilburg , the Netherlands 1 OTB±Research for the Built Environment, Faculty of Architecture, Delft University of Technology, Delft, the Netherlands, 2 Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford , Oxford , United Kingdom , 3 Research Centre Adolescent Development, Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands, 4 Urban and Regional research centre Utrecht (URU), Faculty of Geosciences, Utrecht University , Utrecht , the Netherlands 2 Editor: Antonio Verdejo-GarcÂõa, University of Granada , SPAIN We studied how personality moderates the effect of neighbourhood disadvantage on work commitment and unemployment in early adulthood. Using a personality typology of resilients, overcontrollers, and undercontrollers, we hypothesised that the association between neighbourhood poverty and both work commitment and unemployment would be stronger for overcontrollers and undercontrollers than for resilients. We used longitudinal data (N = 249) to test whether the length of exposure to neighbourhood poverty between age 16 and 21 predicts work commitment and unemployment at age 25. In line with our hypothesis, the findings showed that longer exposure was related to weaker work commitment among undercontrollers and overcontrollers and to higher unemployment among undercontrollers. Resilients' work commitment and unemployment were not predicted by neighbourhood poverty. - Data Availability Statement: All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files. Funding: The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007-2013) / ERC Grant Agreement n. 615159 (ERC Consolidator Grant DEPRIVEDHOODS, Socio-spatial inequality, deprived neighbourhoods, and neighbourhood Introduction Growing up in neighbourhoods with high levels of poverty is often thought to have a negative impact on occupational outcomes later in life (e.g., [1±5]). With regard to occupational outcomes, these neighbourhood effects have mainly been studied by examining the relation between neighbourhood disadvantage and unemployment [ 6,7 ]. The relation between neighbourhood disadvantage and unemployment may be understood through the socialisation mechanism: because youth in poor neighbourhoods are more likely to be exposed to unemployment in their local environment than youth in more affluent neighbourhoods, youth in poor neighbourhoods may adopt lower work commitment, which may lead them to become unemployed as well. From this logic it follows that attitudes towards work play an important role. However, so far, neighbourhood effects studies of occupational outcomes have mainly effects); and from the Utrecht University strategic theme Dynamics of Youth. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. looked at unemployment. In order to extend our understanding of this process, we will examine the relation between neighbourhood adversity and both unemployment and work commitment. This will allow us to not only to look at `hard' measures of occupational outcomes, but also to examine how environmental disadvantage might be related to attitudes. Neighbourhood poverty and occupational outcomes Exposure to neighbourhood poverty is generally considered to predict negative occupational outcomes for youth (e.g., [1±5]). In the literature, various ideas exist about the possible mechanisms behind this neighbourhood effect [ 8 ]. One prominent developmental principle is the socialisation mechanism, which suggests that social behaviour is learned through conditioning and imitation of other's behaviour [ 9 ]. Applying this theory to the neighbourhood context±we would expect that adolescents are likely to incorporate norms that are dominant amongst neighbourhood residents [ 10,11 ]. Poor neighbourhoods are likely to contain more adult residents who are unemployed or not in the labour force compared to more affluent neighbourhoods [ 12 ]. This suggest that poor neighbourhoods are less likely to contain positive role models who are able to demonstrate the benefits of employment and are instead more likely to contain residents with lower job satisfaction [ 13 ]. Furthermore, during adolescence, youths start to spend less time with parents and more with peers [ 14 ]. In poor neighbourhoods, this increased contact with neighbourhood peers increases the likelihood that adolescents come in contact with negative role models in the neighbourhood. With prolonged exposure to neighbourhood poverty during their formative years, youth may internalise nega (...truncated)