Groundbreaking research was conducted in the late 1990s by Columbia University psychology professor Suniya Luthar. Luthar compared more than 200 mostly white, mostly rich suburban tenth graders with the same number of mostly black, mostly low-income urban tenth graders and found that the affluent teens drank, smoked, and used drugs at a higher rate than their low-income counterparts. In the follow-up to Luthar’s work, researchers have similarly pointed out that some of the most at-risk students in the modern age are those who seem to have everything going for them, including their parents’ resources.
