The Intersection of Race and Community Poverty and Its Effects on Adolescents’ Academic Achievement

Although most studies have established the importance of individual-level influences on adolescent outcomes, studies are often limited in that they do not address the effects of broader community-level factors. To address this limitation, we examined the association between community-level poverty and adolescents’ academic achievement, and the role of race in this association. Results from multilevel modeling suggested that (a) regardless of community type (i.e., low vs. high poverty), Black adolescents reported lower academic achievement than White adolescents, (b) community poverty was negatively associated with adolescents’ academic achievement among both White and Black adolescents, and (c) the racial disparity in academic achievement was greater in communities with low poverty. Findings indicated the complex effect of community context and race on adolescents’ academic outcome. Implications of such findings were discussed