The long-term impact of Danish vulnerable neighbourhoods in adolescence on employment status in emerging adulthood

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 employment 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 associations between living in a vulnerable Danish neighbourhood in adolescence and later employment status in emerging adulthood and to compare the relative importance of the family and neighbourhood contexts. 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 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 than to neighbourhoods, with vulnerable neighbourhoods explaining only a small part of the neighbourhood variance. After controlling for individual- and family-level covariates, living in a vulnerable neighbourhood in 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 impact on employment status but with a much larger influence attributed to the family context than to adolescents’ neighbourhood context.