A tale of two urbanicities: Adolescent alcohol and cigarette consumption in high and low-poverty urban neighborhoods

Urbanicity encompasses the different aspects of living in an urban area. While past research treats urban areas as homogeneous, this research employs an empirical study to show how intra-urban differences by poverty are associated with cigarette and alcohol consumption by adolescents. Results demonstrate that for higher poverty adolescents, those living in urban versus less urban areas consume significantly more alcohol and cigarettes. At the same time, for wealthier adolescents, those living in urban versus less urban areas consume significantly fewer of those items. The results are mediated by convenience store density, contributing to our understanding of the relationship between urban environments, specific area characteristics and problem consumption among adolescents. The results suggest that it might be useful to consider new ways of understanding problem consumption by studying distinct aspects of urbanicity related to the retail environment.