Social Inequality in Adolescence: An Interdisciplinary Perspective

Abstract

In every society, some people have more resources than others. This applies to income and wealth, but also to immaterial things like knowledge, social positions, or political influence. This phenomenon has profound consequences for the development of children, because every child is inevitably shaped and bounded by the resources at his or her disposal. This dissertation argues that the life phase of adolescence may constitute a crucial period for the role of social inequality in human development. It provides a perspective on social inequality that is both interdisciplinary and developmental. Applying this perspective, the empirical part of this dissertation consists of eight studies on juvenile delinquency and on political socialization. Among other things, the studies on delinquency suggest that severe decreases in parents’ socioeconomic status, for example due to job losses, may put their adolescent children at risk for serious delinquency. The studies on political socialization reveal that adolescents’ socioeconomic status importantly predicts what issue attitudes and party preference they will develop, and that these adolescent attitudes can characterize people throughout their adult lifespan. This ‘formative phase’ during adolescence fosters generational differences in how people identify with politics. For example, this dissertation demonstrates that the rise of immigration in the left-right distinction, which occurred since the 1980s, was driven almost half by the replacement of older generations from the era of pillarization by younger generations that grew up in a globalized world.