Beyond social disorganization: Family SES, neighborhood context, and adolescent alcohol use

The relationship between contextual factors, including neighborhood characteristics, and adolescent alcohol use remains unclear, with studies finding either no effect or associations in either direction. The current study used data from a subset of a Czech longitudinal cohort (ELSPAC; analytic N = 1528) to examine how family socioeconomic status (SES), neighborhood advantage (administrative data), and perceived neighborhood disorder (subjective ratings) jointly influence alcohol use at age 15 (latent factor using three reports as indicators). Parental drinking, maternal monitoring, and peer alcohol use were considered as proximal mediators. The results from structural equation modeling showed that, contrary to social disorganization theory, perceived neighborhood disorder was associated with lower adolescent alcohol use (β = -0.10, p = .007), while neighborhood advantage was not significantly associated with either alcohol use or the proximal mediators. Family SES showed no direct association with alcohol use but was indirectly associated with more drinking through lower perceived neighborhood disorder, greater parental alcohol use, and greater maternal monitoring (total indirect β = 0.017, 95% CI [0.004, 0.036]). Peer alcohol use remained the strongest correlate of adolescent drinking (β = 0.33, p < .001). These findings are inconsistent with the social disorganization theory but are in line with many existing studies. Both higher SES and greater perceived neighborhood disorder predicted increased maternal monitoring, indicating two distinct pathways to supervision: one driven by resources, the other by environmental risk. These results highlight the value of modeling subjective neighborhood perceptions alongside family-level mediators for understanding adolescent alcohol use.