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Racial and Ethnic Inequality in the Duration of Children's Exposure to Neighborhood Poverty and Affluence
Abstract and Figures
Despite much scholarly attention to "neighborhood effects" on children, no study to date has measured the cumulative exposure of children to neighborhood poverty and affluence. In this article, I estimate racial and ethnic inequality in the amount of time children can expect to live in poor and nonpoor neighborhoods throughout childhood. At rates prevailing in the early- to mid-1990s, the average black child can expect to spend about 50 percent of her first 18 years in neighborhoods with poverty rates in excess of 20 percent. The corresponding figures for Latino and white children are about 40 percent and 5 percent, respectively. I find that black/white differences in childhood exposure to neighborhood poverty are largely accounted for by differences in the probability of being born into a poor neighborhood, and to a lesser degree by differences in rates of upward and downward neighborhood mobility during childhood. Finally, cross-period analyses indicate that white children's share of childhood in the most affluent neighborhood type increased steadily beginning in the late 1980s and that black children's exposure to the poorest neighborhood type increased rapidly in the mid-1980s and then declined sharply throughout the first half of the 1990s.
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... While capturing a temporal dimension largely overlooked in early neighborhood research (i.e., duration of exposure) [4], such summary measures may mask dynamic heterogeneity in the sequence and timing of exposure to residential environments between subgroups. Timberlake (2007) uses period life tables to predict transitions into neighborhood poverty during childhood, showing important change over time in Black and white children's predicted exposure to neighborhood poverty (or affluence) at different stages of childhood and between periods [57]. This study relies on data prior to 1997, however, after which broader sociodemographic change has occurred, and it focuses on the individual's predicted duration of time in neighborhood poverty rather than focusing on identifying the trajectories of neighborhood poverty themselves. ...
... Past work on this topic often takes analytic approaches such as period life tables, logistic regression, or transition matrices [8,10,57]. Often, these studies employ growth curve models (South et al. 2016), which are effective for empirically describing individual-level variability in trajectories of exposure to high-poverty neighborhoods over time, but are limited in that they allow the residuals to vary around the estimate for a single trajectory. By estimating mean trends, these methods assume that all individuals in the population follow a similar functional form in their residential pathways-i.e., one trajectory shape that is assumed to "fit all" (Nagin and Odgers 2013:115)-thereby potentially overlooking important within-group differences [60]. ...
... We perform a prevalence GBT model, which uses the logit link function and relies on a binary outcome for neighborhood poverty for each sample member and at each time point (in our analysis, we draw on data from 1991 to 2018, but use an individual's age as our time variable). To do this, we construct a dichotomous measure of high-poverty neighborhoods denoting whether the poverty rate of a sample member's residential neighborhood is above 20 percent, following past work [36,57]. ...
Prior research has established the greater exposure of African Americans from all income groups to disadvantaged environments compared to whites, but the traditional focus in studies of neighborhood stratification obscures heterogeneity within racial/ethnic groups in residential attainment over time. Also obscured are the moderating influences of broader social changes on the life-course and the experiences of Latinos, a large and growing presence in American cities. We address these issues by examining group-based trajectory models of residential neighborhood disadvantage among white, Black, and Latino individuals in a multi-cohort longitudinal research design of over 1,000 children from Chicago as they transitioned to adulthood over the last quarter century. We find considerable temporal consistency among white individuals compared to dynamic heterogeneity among nonwhite individuals in exposure to residential disadvantage, especially Black individuals and those born in the 1980s compared to the 1990s. Racial and cohort differences are not accounted for by early-life characteristics that predict long-term attainment. Inequalities by race in trajectories of neighborhood disadvantage are thus at once more stable and more dynamic than previous research suggests, and they are modified by broader social changes. These findings offer insights on the changing pathways by which neighborhood racial inequality is produced.
... These people frequently oscillate between cash assistance receipt and low-wage employment throughout their lives. Most researchers that explore the social characteristics of these households have focused mainly on demographic information such as education (Acs & Zimmerman, 2009;Grieger & Danziger, 2011;Neblett, 2007;), race (Acs & Zimmerman, 2009;Grieger & Wyse, 2013;Sandoval, Rank, & Hirschl, 2009;Sharkey, 2008;Timberlake, 2007), gender (Acs & Zimmerman, 2009;Grodner et al., 2007;Sandoval et al., 2009), and their relationship with employment, cash assistance receipt, and other socioeconomic outcomes. However, only two scholars within this literature have included even a limited reference to some type of disability in their analysis (Acs & Zimmerman, 2009;Neblett, 2007). ...
... As a result, they experience much higher rates of unemployment compared to any other racial and ethnic group in the United States (U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2015). African Americans are also more likely to experience chronic poverty (Greiger & Wyse, 2013;Sharkey, 2008;Timberlake, 2007) and be recipients of long-term cash assistance as a result of their socioeconomic disadvantage (Greiger & Danziger, 2011;Neubeck & Cazenave, 2001;Soss et al., 2011). However, we note that financial hardship and income is higher for Hispanics overall. ...
... These findings are consistent with the scenario that nonwhite children, particularly black children, get locked into structural forces that generate systematic dynamics, such as disinvestment and disorder, that in turn may contribute to further disadvantages in health and wellbeing over the life course. Our findings resonate with the large volume of studies that underscore the persistent racial inequalities in neighborhood conditions (Pais et al. 2014;Sampson 2009;South and Crowder, 1997;Swisher et al. 2013;Timberlake 2007). ...
This study uses data from the longitudinal Panel Study of Income Dynamics data and its Transition to Adulthood (TA) Study (2005–2017), in conjunction with decades of neighborhood-level data from the U.S. decennial census and American Community Survey, to examine the relationship between individuals’ neighborhood poverty exposure trajectories in childhood and the likelihood of obesity in emerging adulthood. Latent growth mixture models reveal that exposure to neighborhood poverty differs considerably for white and nonwhite individuals over their childhood life course. Durable exposure to neighborhood poverty confers greater subsequent obesity risks in emerging adulthood than transitory experiences of neighborhood poverty. Racial differences in the changing and persistent trajectories of neighborhood poverty help explain part of the racial differences in obesity risks. Among nonwhites, and compared to consistent nonpoor neighborhood conditions, both durable and transitory neighborhood poverty exposures are significantly associated with higher obesity risks. This study suggests that a theoretical framework that integrates key elements of the life-course perspective is helpful to uncover the individual and structural pathways through which neighborhood histories in poverty shape population health in general.
... While high-income families are more likely to move to higher-income neighbourhoods, socioeconomically disadvantaged individuals as well as nonwhite groups, particularly African Americans, face structural barriers and are less likely to move into more affluent neighbourhoods (South et al., 2005), suggesting that an important share of residential stability is related to mobility constraints rather than residential satisfaction (Coulton et al., 2012). Moreover, disadvantages among individuals staying in the same neighbourhoods may increase when wealthier residents move away (Sampson & Sharkey, 2008) and evidence further indicates that the cumulative burden of neighbourhood poverty is primarily driven by persistent neighbourhood poverty from birth rather than residential mobility (Timberlake, 2007) and parents' tenure in poor neighbourhoods are positively related to exposure to poor neighbourhoods (Li et al., 2019 structural educational opportunity, which refers to the proportion of 12th graders enroled in an academic or college preparatory programme as an IV. The costs of nonnormative transitions such as teenage childbearing might be lower when educational opportunities are low. ...
This study maps early adulthood family life courses from ages 15 to 28 and tests whether they are causally linked to neighbourhood conditions with an instrumental strategy in the United States using Add Health data. Results show that the risk of sorting into pathways typified by early childbearing regardless of relationship status was higher in disadvantaged neighbourhoods. The instrumental variable strategy further showed that pathways characterized by single parenthood and early marriage with multiple children increased significantly with neighbourhood disadvantage, whereas other significant associations disappeared in these analyses. Overall, the results highlight the importance of considering multiple family events as a process outcome to understand the impact of neighbourhood conditions. Indeed, neighbourhood deprivation may lead to life courses associated with nonconventional outcomes. While some of the observed neighbourhood effects may be driven by selection bias in the United States, not all effects are necessarily due to selection and depend on the longitudinal family trajectories. These results were supported by several robustness tests, including the use of an alternative instrumental variable, as the main models suggested weak identification.
This paper hypothesizes that disadvantaged parents use more and harsher discipline in part as a rational response to parenting in more dangerous and less forgiving environments. I model parent-child interactions in which altruistic parents modify the behavior of short-sighted children by investing in children's self-control and by punishing misbehavior. In the model, parents choose to devote more resources to punishment when children's misbehavior has more serious long-term consequences. I present empirical evidence in support of this hypothesis by examining the relationship between school safety and parental discipline, finding that parents use harsher discipline when their children attend more dangerous and disorderly schools, even after accounting for neighborhood fixed-effects and a rich set of parent-level controls. Because parents are not directly exposed to their child's school environment, school safety is most likely to influence parents by shaping their concerns about their children's safety, rather than by affecting their stress, mental reserves, or knowledge about effective parenting strategies.
Adolescence is a sensitive developmental period marked by significant changes that unfold across multiple contexts. As a central context of development, neighborhoods capture—in both physical and social space—the stratification of life chances and differential distribution of resources and risks. For some youth, neighborhoods are springboards to opportunities; for others, they are snares that constrain progress and limit the ability to avoid risks. Despite abundant research on “neighborhood effects,” scant attention has been paid to how neighborhoods are a product of social stratification forces that operate simultaneously to affect human development. Neighborhoods in the United States are the manifestation of three intersecting social structural cleavages: race/ethnicity, socioeconomic class, and geography. Many opportunities are allocated or denied along these three cleavages. To capture these joint processes, we advocate a “neighborhood-centered” approach to study the effects of neighborhoods on adolescent development. Using nationally representative data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health), we demonstrate the complex ways that these three cleavages shape specific neighborhood contexts and can result in stark differences in well-being. A neighborhood-centered approach demands more rigorous and sensitive theories of place, as well as multidimensional classification and measures. We discuss an agenda to advance the state of theories and research, drawing explicit attention to the stratifying forces that bring about distinct neighborhood types that shape developmental trajectories during adolescence and beyond.
Background
Prescription drug misuse remains a persistent problem in the United States. Residents living in disadvantaged neighborhoods are at greater risk of substance abuse such as alcohol, tobacco, or drugs. However, whether neighborhood disadvantage affects prescription drug misuse remains underexplored.
Methods
This study uses data on 3,444 mothers from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study to examine the role of neighborhood disadvantage in prescription drug misuse. In addition, we examine whether social support and neighborhood collective efficacy (social cohesion and social control) explain this relationship. The analysis uses multivariate logistic regression and delineated between the following neighborhoods: affluent (3% poverty), low poverty (3-10%), moderate poverty (10-20%), and high poverty neighborhoods (20% or more).
Results
Mothers living in moderately poor neighborhoods were more than twice as likely (odds = 2.17, 95% CI: 1.43-3.27) to misuse prescription drugs than mothers living in neighborhoods with high poverty. Mothers living in neighborhoods with high poverty did not have a statistically significant difference in prescription drug misuse than those living in affluent or low poverty neighborhoods. Social support and neighborhood collective efficacy did not explain these associations. The association between moderate poverty and prescription drug misuse was mostly direct and there was no indirect association.
Conclusion
The study highlights the higher risk of prescription drug misuse among mothers living in neighborhoods with moderate poverty. Interventions aimed at reducing opioid misuse should focus on demographic groups that are more vulnerable such as low-income mothers living in disadvantaged neighborhoods.
We used data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study which includes a sample of adolescents of age 15 at the most recent wave (between 2014 and 2017) from mainly low-income urban families in the United States, to examine the association between neighborhood poverty entries and exits and adolescent depression and anxiety. In addition, we examined whether these associations differed by gender. Adolescents who consistently lived in disadvantaged neighborhoods had the highest level of depression and anxiety. Those who entered poor neighborhoods were more depressed than those who never lived in poor neighborhoods. Those who exited poor neighborhoods showed no significant difference in depression and anxiety compared to those never lived in poor neighborhoods. Furthermore, these associations applied to adolescent girls only and were not statistically significant for boys. The results suggest that neighborhood poverty has cumulative negative impacts on adolescent mental health and disproportionally affects adolescent girls. Reducing neighborhood poverty would substantially improve the health of adolescents, especially girls, which would reduce health disparities.
Racial-ethnic disparities in adolescent sexual risk behavior are associated with health disparities during adulthood and are therefore important to understand. Some scholars argue that neighborhood disadvantage induces disparities, yet prior research is mixed. We extend neighborhood-effects research by addressing long-term exposure to neighborhood disadvantage and estimation bias resulting from inclusion of time-varying covariates. Drawing from the Fragile Families and Child Well-Being Study, we compare a point-in-time proximal measure of neighborhood disadvantage with a duration-weighted measure using marginal structural models with inverse probability of treatment weights. Findings indicate that multiracial, non-Hispanic black, and Hispanic youth exhibit significantly higher sexual risk and duration-weighted exposure to neighborhood disadvantage than non-Hispanic white adolescents. Duration-weighted exposure is a better predictor of sexual initiation and number of partners by age 15 than a point-in-time proximal measure of neighborhood disadvantage and accounts for a substantial portion of the race-ethnic differences in sexual risk.
Neighborhoods may contribute to the maintenance of inequality in well-being across generations. Here, we use 35 years of restricted geo-coded NLSY 1979 and NLSY Children and Young Adults data to estimate the association between multigenerational exposure to childhood neighborhood disadvantage and subsequent adult exposure. Invoking cousin fixed effects models that adjust for unobserved legacies of disadvantage that cascade across generations, we find that families where both parents and their children are exposed to childhood neighborhood disadvantage are likely to pass on the legacy of neighborhood disadvantage to successive generations, net of observed and unobserved confounders. Second, we find a direct intergenerational neighborhood association, net of observed and unobserved confounders. Third, we find that unobserved confounders nested in previous generations explain away the intragenerational neighborhood association. These findings reorient neighborhood theory to more seriously attend to the interdependence of neighborhood level and individual level antecedents of inequality across generations.
We investigate how recent changes in the Western family have affected childhood living arrangements. For 17 developed countries, we use multistate life table techniques to estimate childhood trajectories of coresidence with biological fathers versus other maternal partners. In all countries childhood exposure to single parenting is more often caused by parental separation than out-of-partnership childbearing. Both exposure to single parenting and expectancy of childhood spent with a single non-cohabiting mother vary widely across countries, with the United States exhibiting the highest levels of each at early 1990s rates. The greatest international variations concern parental cohabitation-its prevalence, durability, and the degree to which its increase has compensated for a decrease in the expectancy of childhood spent with married parents. Overall, we find little evidence of international convergence in childrearing arrangements, except that in countries where parental marriage has declined over time, childrearing has predominantly shifted to single mothers.
"The Truly Disadvantagedshould spur critical thinking in many quarters about the causes and possible remedies for inner city poverty. As policy makers grapple with the problems of an enlarged underclass they—as well as community leaders and all concerned Americans of all races—would be advised to examine Mr. Wilson's incisive analysis."—Robert Greenstein,New York Times Book Review "'Must reading' for civil-rights leaders, leaders of advocacy organizations for the poor, and for elected officials in our major urban centers."—Bernard C. Watson,Journal of Negro Education "Required reading for anyone, presidential candidate or private citizen, who really wants to address the growing plight of the black urban underclass."—David J. Garrow,Washington Post Book World Selected by the editors of theNew York Times Book Reviewas one of the sixteen best books of 1987. Winner of the 1988 C. Wright Mills Award of the Society for the Study of Social Problems.
Objective. Our research examines how urban residents define "neighborhood" and whether their definitions influence their answers to other survey questions. Methods. We use data from a 1988 Nashville, Tennessee, study to tap respondents' abstract neighborhood definitions as well as the symbolic and physical identities they attribute to their own neighborhoods. Results. Territorial meanings predominate among respondents when neighborhood is considered in the abstract, although few definitions are exclusively territorial in nature. At a more concrete level, individuals living near one another often give the same name for their neighborhood of residence but differ markedly in their reports of the area's physical size and complexity. Such differences do not have much impact on answers to vague-referent questions about neighborhood life (i.e., questions in which the concept of neighborhood is left undefined). Conclusions. The fact that at least some survey results appear relatively insensitive to respondents' definitional idiosyncrasies should reassure practitioners. We nevertheless recommend that a few items be included in survey instruments to help clarify people's understanding of neighborhood and other "quasi-factual" geographic concepts.