Growing up in vulnerable neighbourhoods in adolescence and later occupational status in emerging adulthood: A Danish register-based multilevel study

Previous studies have linked growing up in vulnerable neighbourhoods to worse health and social outcomes in adulthood, but with mixed findings regarding the impact on young people’s occupational status, and with studies often limited by models that did not optimally distinguish neighbourhood- from individual- or family-level effects. The aim of this study was to examine the long-term association between growing up in a vulnerable Danish neighbourhood during adolescence and later occupational status in emerging adulthood and to compare the relative importance of the family and neighbourhood context.
Danish population register data were used to follow 390,574 individuals nested in 301,227 families, which were nested in 7,937 neighbourhoods from age 10-15 in 2009 to age 20-25 in 2019. Three-level multilevel logistic regression models stratified by native and immigrant/descendant status were applied to estimate the general and specific family and neighbourhood contextual effects.
The results showed higher general contextual effects attributed to the family context compared to neighbourhoods, with the vulnerable neighbourhoods explaining only a small part of the neighbourhood variance. After controlling for individual- and family-level covariates, growing up in a vulnerable neighbourhood during adolescence was associated with a higher risk of not being in education or employment in emerging adulthood for both native Danes and immigrants/descendants. The findings indicate that growing up in a vulnerable neighbourhood may have a long-term negative impact on occupational status but with a much larger contextual influence attributed to the family context than to adolescents’ neighbourhood context.