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Working Paper

Childhood Exposure to Violence and Nurturing Relationships: The Long-Run Effects on Black Men

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Black men who witnessed a shooting before turning 12 have household earnings as adults 31 percent lower than those who did not. We present evidence that this gap is causal and is most likely the result of toxic stress; it is not mediated by incarceration and is constant across neighborhood socioeconomic status. Turning to mechanisms related to toxic stress, we study exposure to violence and nurturing relationships during adolescence. Item-anchored indexes synthesize variables on these treatments better than summing positive responses, Item Response Theory, or Principal Components, which all perform similarly. Providing adolescents with nurturing relationships is almost as beneficial as preventing their exposure to violence.
07.12.2023ISSN 2573-7953 WP 23-16DOI 10.26509/frbc-wp-202316
Keywords Interpersonal Violence, Code of the Street, Toxic Stress, Nurturing Relationship, Race, Neighborhood Effect
JEL Classification Codes H40, I38, J15, J24, R23

Working Papers of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland are preliminary materials circulated to stimulate discussion and critical comment on research in progress. They may not have been subject to the formal editorial review accorded official Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland publications. The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not represent the views of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland or the Federal Reserve System.

Suggested Citation

Aliprantis, Dionissi, and Kristen Tauber. 2023. “Childhood Exposure to Violence and Nurturing Relationships: The Long-Run Effects on Black Men.” Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Working Paper No. 23-16. https://doi.org/10.26509/frbc-wp-202316