An Empirical Study on Urban Youth’s Problem Behaviors: Findings from a National Survey

Chinese urban youth cannot naturally comply with social rules and norms and are prone to conduct problem behaviors within the context of accelerating urbanization of youth population. Based on 1st China Youth Reproductive Health Survey data, using Binary Logit Model, this paper analyses the factors influencing urban youth’s occurrence of premarital sex, smoking addiction and pornography addicts and the differences among the three types of problem behaviors. The results show that three types of problem behaviors occurred more among boys than girls and especially smoking addiction is a prominent problem behavior in boys. Parents with higher education level, living with two biological parents, being a student, having siblings, and living in a developed eastern city are protective factors for problem behaviors among urban youth. While youth from high income families are more likely to conduct problem behaviors compared with their counterparts from low income families. Our study point out that behavioral intervention for reducing problem behavior in urban youth can be more effective when taking a comprehensive “government-school-family” perspective.