A Life-Course Theory of Cumulative Disadvantage and the Stability of Delinquency

Although often lumped together, longitudinal and developmental approaches to crime are not the same. Longitudinal research invokes a methodological stance--collecting and analyzing data on persons (or macrosocial units) over time. Ironically, however, one of the objections to existing longitudinal research has been that it often looks like, or produces results equivalent to, cross-sectional research (Gottfredson and Hirschi 1987). Critics of longitudinal research have a valid point-many studies simply investigate between-individual relationships using a static, invariant conception of human development. For example, showing an "effect" of social class at time one on crime at time two requires a longitudinal design, but substantively such an effect says nothing about withinindividual change, dynamic or sequential processes, or whether in fact "time" really matters. Hence longitudinal studies often borrow the tools of cross-sectional analysis but do not inform about how individuals progress through the life course. Perhaps most important, until recently longitudinal research has labored under the trinity of dominant crirnino-