Skip to content

Structural Constraints

Definition

In lifestyle exposure theory, the demographic and role-based limits, such as age, sex, income and family status, that shape which lifestyles are available or expected of a person in the first place.

Related terms

Fear-of-Crime Paradox
The consistent survey finding that older adults and women report higher fear of crime than young men, despite young men carrying the...
Lifestyle Exposure Theory
The theory, set out by Michael Hindelang, Michael Gottfredson and James Garofalo in 1978, that a person's routine daily activities and associations...
Punitiveness
Public support for harsher sentencing and tougher criminal justice responses generally, which tracks confidence in institutions more consistently than it tracks fear...
Shadow Hypothesis
Kenneth Ferraro's proposal that women's general fear of crime functions partly as a proxy for a more specific fear of sexual assault,...
Victim-Offender Overlap
The empirical finding that the same demographic groups, and often the same individuals, show up disproportionately as both victims and offenders, because...

Explained in