“Poor teens in Baltimore face worse conditions than those in Nigeria — study”
“In the five neighborhoods examined in the study, poverty was the common thread that linked these culturally diverse locations. Differences among the teens in these urban areas became obvious, however, when it came to how they perceived their state of well-being.
Teens from Baltimore and Johannesburg, South Africa, viewed their communities more negatively than the other locations in the study.
The two cities showed the lowest number of teenagers who felt safe in their neighborhoods (percentages ranged from 43.9 percent among males in Johannesburg to 66.1 percent of females in Baltimore), as well as the highest averages for witnessing violence (8.9 percent for males and 7.0 percent among females in Johannesburg; 7.0 percent among males and 6.3 percent among females in Baltimore)…
“When you look at how they perceive their environments, kids in both Baltimore and Johannesburg are fearful. They don’t feel safe from violence,”Mmari said.“This is something we didn’t really see in other cities. In Shanghai, for example, there wasn’t a great deal of violence. You’d ask kids about their safety concerns, and they would say something like, ‘I’m afraid of crossing a busy street.’””
