When It Comes to Delinquency, Boys Exposed to More Risk

Researchers trying to understand why high school-age boys are involved in serious delinquency more often than girls have found that males are exposed to higher levels of risk factors and lower amounts of protective factors.

A new study of more than 7,800 high school sophomores from 40 suburban and rural communities in seven states examined 22 risk and protective factors associated with serious delinquency. It found that boys reported higher levels of risk and lower levels of protection for 18 of the factors than did girls. In addition, boys were twice as likely to engage in seven of the eight serious delinquent behaviors that were measured.

“Boys come into contact with risk factors in their families, school, peers and in their personal attributes more frequently and are sometimes influenced by them more strongly than are girls,” says Abigail Fagan, lead author of the study and an intervention specialist with the University of Washington’s Social Development Research Group.

All of the risk and protective factors examined were significantly related to serious delinquency for both boys and girls, according to Fagan.

The students in the study came from communities with populations ranging from 1,600 to 106,000 in Colorado, Illinois, Kansas, Maine, Oregon, Utah and Washington. Slightly more than half of the students were girls, and 79 percent were white.

Data were collected from surveys administered in school, including questions about participation in eight behaviors in the past year that are indicative of serious delinquency – being arrested, carrying a handgun, bringing a handgun to school, attacking someone with the intent to do harm, stealing a motor vehicle, selling illegal drugs, being suspended or expelled from school, and being drunk or high at school.

Being drunk or high at school was the most common self-reported offense with nearly 20 percent of the girls and 26 percent of the boys reporting such behavior. Attacking someone was the second-most-common behavior, with 11 percent of girls and 21 percent of boys reporting it. However, the overwhelming majority of teenagers said they did not engage in delinquent acts.
The 22 protective factors measured included the teens’ attachment to each of their parents, rewards for good behavior in school and social skills in dealing with other people. Risks included family conflict, low commitment to school, peer drug use and sensation seeking.

While boys experience higher levels of risk and lower protection for 18 of these factors, girls only reported higher risk for family conflict and less protection from attachment to their fathers. There were no gender differences for exposure to peer drug use and for peer rewards for delinquency.


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Study of China One-Child Policy Reveals Complexity, Effectiveness

In what is being called the first systematic examination of China’s fertility policy and practice reveals that, despite government exemptions in rural areas, 63 percent of Chinese couples are strictly limited to one child. Furthermore, the policy has proven remarkably effective, with actual birth rates decreasing nearly to the mandated levels.

The study, which involved researchers in the United States and China, is the first to use data on fertility policy and population growth collected from 420 Chinese prefectures (districts comparable to U.S. counties).

“We want to clear up confusion about the one-child policy,” says Wang Feng, sociology professor at University of California Irvine and a lead author of the study. “Despite what some say, the policy has not been ‘relaxed’ over the years.”

Published in the current issue of the journal Population and Development Review, the study reveals the complexity of the one-child policy. For example, it details the kinds of exceptions within prefectures for couples who give birth to a girl first, and for parents who themselves come from a one-child family.

“The system of exemptions resembles the American tax code in its complexity,” Wang says. “But this does not change the fact that the one-child policy applies without exception to a significant majority of Chinese couples.”

China’s average mandated fertility rate, accounting for the variety of exceptions across the country, is 1.47 children per couple, Wang and his collaborators find, and their analysis of census data shows the actual fertility rate is about 1.5 children per couple.

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Study Notes Decline in Male Births in US, Japan

A study published in this week’s online edition of Environmental Health Perspectives reports that during the past 30 years, the number of male births has decreased each year in the U.S. and Japan. In a review of all births in both countries, the University of Pittsburgh-led study found significantly fewer boys being born relative to girls in the U.S. and Japan, and that an increasing proportion of fetuses that die are male.

They note that the decline in births is equivalent to 135,000 fewer white males in the U.S. and 127,000 fewer males in Japan over the past three decades and suggest that environmental factors are one explanation for these trends.

“The pattern of decline in the ratio of male to female births remains largely unexplained,” says Devra Lee Davis, lead investigator of the study, director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute’s Center for Environmental Oncology and professor of epidemiology, University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health. “We know that men who work with some solvents, metals and pesticides father fewer baby boys. We also know that nutritional factors, physical health and chemical exposures of pregnant women affect their ability to have children and the health of their offspring. We suspect that some combination of these factors, along with older age of parents, may account for decreasing male births.”

Davis explains that environmental factors, such as prenatal exposure to endocrine--disrupting environmental pollutants may impact the SRY gene – a gene on the Y chromosome that determines the sex of a fertilized egg. Other environmental factors that also may affect the viability of a male fetus include the parents’ weight, nutrition and the use of alcohol and drugs.

In the study, Davis and her colleagues reported an overall decline of 17 males per 10,000 births in the U.S. and a decline of 37 males per 10,000 births in Japan since 1970. They also found that while fetal death rates have generally decreased, the proportion of male fetuses that die has continued to increase. In Japan, among the fetuses that die, two-thirds are male, up from just over half in 1970.

The study also examined the ratio of African-American male to female births to that of whites in the U.S. The researchers found that while the number of African-American male births has increased modestly over time, the ratio of male to female births for African-Americans remains lower than that of whites. In addition, they noted that African-Americans have a higher fetal mortality rate overall and a higher proportion of male fetuses that die.

“These results are not surprising since the black-white ratio in terms of infant mortality has remained the same for almost 100 years,” says Lovell Jones, study co-investigator and professor and director, Center for Research on Minority Health, department of health disparities research, University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. “Given the higher mortality rates for African-American males in the United States, these results reemphasize the need to determine all factors, including environmental contaminants, which are responsible for this continuing health disparity.”

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