Having a Strong Community Protects Adolescents From Risky Health Behaviors

A Cornell University study has found that poor adolescents who live in communities with more social cohesiveness and control get some measure of protection; they’re less likely to smoke and be obese as adolescents. 

As expected, adolescents from impoverished families were more likely to smoke and to have a higher body mass index (BMI), a measure of obesity, than adolescents from middle-income families. But poor adolescents who had more social capital were somewhat protected; they were less likely to smoke and tended to have lower BMIs than poor adolescents who didn’t have abundant social capital.