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The Truly Advantaged: Examining the Effects of Privileged Places on Educational Attainment
Abstract
Inspired by William J. Wilson’s The Truly Disadvantaged, hundreds of studies have focused on the detrimental effects of disadvantaged neighborhoods. Consequently, far less is known about the contextual effects of advantaged neighborhoods, and what is known does not take into consideration long-term exposure. The present study extends research on advantaged neighborhoods by examining how respondents' neighborhood contexts across their entire childhoods influence adult educational attainment. Findings indicate that structural effects in advantaged neighborhoods influence residents’ educational attainment—especially for White residents. Results suggest that addressing the issues associated with the truly disadvantaged requires examining the compounding privilege of the truly advantaged.
... Students who live in neighborhoods with strong social norms pertaining to educational attainment display higher academic outcomes (Coleman, 1988;Howell, 2019;W. Wilson, 1987;Wodtke et al., 2011). ...
... Wilson, 1987;Wodtke et al., 2011). Here, neighborhoods have a significant impact on children's educational success both over individual characteristics-such as family socioeconomic status and parental educational attainment (Chetty et al., 2016;Howell, 2019;Massey et al., 2013;Turley, 2003;Wodtke et al., 2011)-as well as over a school's poverty status and access to resources (Wodtke & Parbst, 2017). The social connections provided through neighborhood-school relationships with adults lead to academic success (Cohen-Vogel et al., 2010;Coleman, 1988;Crowson & Goldring, 2010). ...
... The social connections provided through neighborhood-school relationships with adults lead to academic success (Cohen-Vogel et al., 2010;Coleman, 1988;Crowson & Goldring, 2010). The norms and expectations from individuals in a close-knit neighborhood to do well in school, especially in affluent neighborhoods, has a great impact on student success (Ainsworth, 2002;Crouch et al., 2021;Howell, 2019). Strong neighborhood relationships can also provide youth help in applying to college and finding internship opportunities (Howell, 2019;Massey et al., 2013). ...
Traditional school enrollment practices, especially in urban areas, were guided by neighborhood boundaries and students had to attend their zoned school. However, there has been an increase of “school choice” policies across the United States, in which parents are allowed to openly enroll their children in schools regardless of boundary restrictions. Concomitantly, there is an increase in loneliness and a decrease in social connectedness in individualistic, market-based economic countries. Using qualitative interview responses from Arizonan urban residents ( n = 109), this research investigates how feelings of neighborhood connectedness are related to school choice. Parents who send their children to their assigned school ( n = 56) tend to like their neighborhoods more and have deeper relationships with neighbors and so do their children. Whereas, parents who choose other schools for their children ( n = 53) and their children have fewer neighborhood relationships. These findings contextualize how school choice negatively correlates to neighborhood connectedness.
... Studies have found mixed evidence in this regard, often reporting small effects and sometimes even no significant effects at all (e.g. Brooks-Gunn et al., 1993;Bramley and Karley, 2007;Ainsworth, 2010;Owens, 2010;Sharkey, 2010;Wodtke et al., 2011;Caudillo and Torche, 2014;Otero et al., 2017;Wodtke and Parbst, 2017;Howell, 2019;Nieuwenhuis et al., 2019). As such, the potential impact of residential conditions on educational outcomes has been intensely debated, especially due to methodological imperfections but also conceptual aspects. ...
... Nieuwenhuis and Hooimeijer, 2016;Nieuwenhuis et al., 2019) and the relevance of concentrated advantage for explaining educational outcomes (e.g. Johnson, 2013;Toft and Ljunggren, 2016;Howell, 2019). In this paper, we focus on addressing some of these issues. ...
... Some scholars have argued that areas of affluence are likely to be a stronger contributor to educational outcomes than concentrations of poverty (Johnson, 2013). Nevertheless, little is currently known about how living in affluent areas may influence such outcomes, that is the potential mechanisms of action (cf., Brooks-Gunn et al., 1993;Leventhal and Brooks-Gunn, 2000;Howell, 2019). To shed light on this issue, the present study enriches the conceptualization of advantaged neighbourhoods and identifies the kind of mechanism that may theoretically channel the effect of concentrated affluence onto educational outcomes, thus generating further advantage. ...
We examine how different spatial compositions affect the educational achievement in mathematics of 16-year-old students in Chile, a Latin American country with high inequality and one of the most segregated education systems in the world. Conceptually, we complement the literature on ‘neighbourhood effects’, which typically addresses the influence of concentrated disadvantage, by focusing on concentrated advantage and its influence on educational outcomes. We construct a panel with all school students who took a national standardized mathematics test in 2010, 2014 and 2016 in the Metropolitan Region of Santiago, Chile. We complement it with survey data for the 52 districts of the Metropolitan Region, clustering the districts based on factors such as unemployment, economic inequality, access to services, experiences of violence and stigmatization. Our different identification strategies consistently show that concentrated poverty and affluence are both relevant for explaining educational achievement in mathematics above and beyond individual and school characteristics.
... However, some scholars have suggested that the spatial concentration of socioeconomic advantage is likely to be a stronger contributor to educational inequality than the concentration of disadvantage (Johnson, 2013;Howell, 2019a). Despite this possibility, little is known about whether living in affluent areas has a positive effect on students' academic performance (c.f., Ensminger et al., 1996;Gordon and Monastiriotis, 2006;Howell, 2019b). To shed light on this problem, this study examines the effects of living in different areas of the spatial context. ...
... (2) few studies have explicitly examined their bidirectionality or asymmetrical forms of causality (c.f., Brooks-Gunn et al., 1993;Johnson, 2013;Howell, 2019b); (3) the thresholds of their effects have not been studied either (Musterd et al., 2019). To help alleviate these issues, this study enriches the conceptualization of advantaged neighbourhoods and delineates how they may facilitate the intergenerational transmission of socioeconomic advantages. ...
... By highlighting the restrictions experienced by people living in low-income or poor areas, compared to the choices available to more affluent middle-class people, we argue that inequality in terms of sociospatial opportunities is a relational problem that must be analysed considering the absolutely fundamental structural conditions -especially the privileges enjoyed by those who occupy the higher positions within the class and spatial structures (Massey, 1996;Pinçon-Charlot and Pinçon, 2018). This issue has been noticeably overlooked in the literature on "neighbourhood effects" and educational outcomes, which has almost exclusively focused on the negative effects of living in underprivileged areas (Howell, 2019b). By leaving out the topmost part of the spatial structure, researchers have limited their ability to understand which mechanisms matter in various areas, not only impoverished ones (Johnson, 2013). ...
We explore how different spatial compositions affect the educational achievement in mathematics of 16 year-old students in Chile, a Latin American country with high income inequality and school segregation. We develop a critical review on the literature on negative "neighbourhood effects" associated with concentrated poverty, complementing it with studies concerning self-segregation preferences by members of the upper-middle class. We combine administrative data about student performance with survey data for the 52 municipalities of the Metropolitan Region of Santiago de Chile. We cluster the districts based on factors such as unemployment, economic inequality, access to services, experiences of violence and stigmatization. Using longitudinal data, we look at the effect of each of the six spatial clusters on academic performance. Spatial clusters report a significant effect, above and beyond that of individual, household, and school-level characteristics. We conclude that space complements and reinforces the processes of accumulation of socioeconomic (dis)advantages.
... In fact, research has shown that neighborhood effects are not racially invariant and that neighborhood protective effects tend to be weaker for Black than for White individuals (Alvarado, 2020;Chetty et al., 2020;Howell, 2019) for White individuals. Notably, according to Chetty et al. (2020), the levels of racial bias among White individuals moderated some of these effects. ...
... Our study examined the individual-level sources of a key neighborhood-level process-collective efficacy-and underscored its eminently racialized formation. Acknowledging the racialized character of neighborhood social processes could prove key to understanding why neighborhood differences fail to account for all racial inequalities (Chetty et al., 2020;Sampson, 2018) and why neighborhood effects may be race/ethnic specific (Chetty et al., 2020;Howell, 2019;Levy et al., 2019). These "racism effects" have been seldom acknowledged (Bonilla- Silva & Baiocchi, 2001). ...
The current project examines whether perceptions of collective efficacy are racialized. Using a sample of Black and Latinx young adults in Chicago, we first investigate whether perceptions of discrimination vary across Chicago's neighborhoods and whether neighborhood-level structural characteristics (concentrated disadvantage, immigrant concentration, residential stability) or neighborhood social processes (neighborhood-level collective efficacy) are related to their perceptions of discrimination. Our estimations show that perceptions of discrimination are endemic to Chicago's neighborhoods and are not related with neighborhood-level structural characteristics. Second, we examine whether perceptions of discrimination predict perceiving less collective efficacy while controlling for neighborhood characteristics. Overall, individuals perceive less collective efficacy when they perceive being discriminated against. Third, we analyze the sources of perceptions of collective efficacy separately for Black and Latinx individuals. These results suggest that discrimination shapes Black indi-viduals' perceptions of their neighbors but do not hold for Latinx individuals. Supplemental analyses reveal that for Latinx individuals, discrimination undermines perceptions of collective efficacy only when is framed as related to their race. Taken together, our results suggest that racism is embedded in the way racialized individuals perceive their neighbors' agreement regarding norms of intervention. In short, the results suggest that the formation of collective efficacy is racialized.
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... Moreover, the focus on poor neighborhoods neglects the fact that residential segregation was not solely created to relegate Blacks to poor neighborhoods, but also to elevate Whites' exposure to more economically-advantaged residential areas. As a result, this focus can often frame Black neighborhoods as a problem and as areas from which individuals need to escape, while leaving White neighborhoods, and the hoarding of resources that tends to occur there, unacknowledged (Goetz et al., 2020;Howell, 2019;Howell & Korver-Glenn, 2020). Thus, we may be underestimating the detrimental association between segregation and racial stratification by neglecting how segregation may improve Whites' exposure to spaces of greater economic advantage. ...
... Thus, we may be underestimating the detrimental association between segregation and racial stratification by neglecting how segregation may improve Whites' exposure to spaces of greater economic advantage. We may also be reinforcing racial discourses that characterize Black neighborhoods as uniformly high poverty, captured with a single threshold, and as areas to solely problematize, rather than expanding segregation discourses to problematize areas of White economic advantage (Goetz et al., 2020;Howell, 2019). ...
Little research has sought to understand the association between adolescent exposure to segregation and Black-White differences in mobility into and out of neighborhoods of greater economic resources in adulthood. Prior research has typically adopted a narrow conception of neighborhood economic resources, specifying neighborhoods with poverty rates below 20% as non-poor vis-à-vis poor neighborhoods that possess poverty rates of 20% or more. Research using this conception has shown that Blacks are more likely to reside in poor neighborhoods than Whites. However, neglecting segregation’s association with mobility into more economically-advantaged communities misses how segregation structures exposure to opportunity for Blacks and Whites. We assess this theme using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics linked to population censuses. We demonstrate that adolescent segregation, measured aspatially with the dissimilarity index and spatially with the index of spatial proximity, decreases Blacks’ probability of moving to lower-poverty neighborhoods—neighborhoods that we define as having poverty rates of less than 10%—and raises their chances of migrating into higher-poverty neighborhoods in adulthood—neighborhoods with poverty rates greater than or equal to 10%. Whites’ mobility patterns suggest that adolescent segregation increases their probability of moving into and out of lower-poverty neighborhoods as adults. Our findings provide insight into the mechanisms that perpetuate Black-White stratification, while pointing to potential policy changes to ameliorate racial differences in exposure to areas of greater economic advantage as well as improving the equitability of investment in higher-poverty communities.
... The net takeaway from this research is clear: disadvantages from neighborhood poverty exposures are an important part of how patterns of inequality by race, ethnicity and socioeconomic status reproduce over time. Evidence from other research suggests how racial and ethnic segregation may also concentrate affluent households, particularly Whites, in advantaged neighborhoods, with this residential stratification thereby helping to hoard opportunities among an already privileged few (Howell 2019;Goetz et al. 2019;Reeves 2018). This theoretical perspective informs how neighborhood inequalities can exist in terms of concentrated disadvantage and advantage, both with important consequences for broader patterns of social stratification. ...
... Understanding trends in suburban residential mobility using household-level data will accordingly inform the degree to which differences in exposure to high-poverty neighborhoods reflect group differences in resources compared to mechanisms of discrimination and segregated housing search processes. Future studies should also investigate the extent to which racial and ethnic segregation not only exacerbates the concentration of racial and ethnic minorities in relatively disadvantaged urban and suburban neighborhoods, but also increases the concentration of high income households, particularly Whites, among affluent neighborhoods (O'Connell and Howell 2016;Howell 2019;Goetz et al. 2019). Theorized effects of segregation on racial and ethnic inequality through advantaging White neighborhood conditions may be focused on high socioeconomic status households such that a similar empirical framework looking at concentration of affluence could assess this relationship. ...
Racial and ethnic segregation in U.S. metropolitan areas contributes to the existence of neighborhood poverty, with segregation typically conceptualized as occurring between central city and suburban neighborhoods due to the racially exclusive nature of suburbanization through much of the twentieth century. However, increasing suburbanization across race, ethnicity and socioeconomic status since around 1970 has complicated the spatial structure of residential inequalities among metropolitan areas. In this study, I assess how patterns of racial and ethnic inequality in exposure to neighborhood poverty changed across urban and suburban locations since 1980, and I investigate how different dimensions of segregation by race and ethnicity correspond to worsened racial and ethnic inequality in exposure to disadvantaged neighborhoods in urban as well as suburban areas. To study differences between suburbs, I contribute a novel approach for measuring suburban neighborhoods based on their density, housing stock age and overall degree of development. Results demonstrate how the conventional city-suburb dichotomy masks substantial differences between suburbs in (a) Black, Latino and White exposure to neighborhood disadvantage and (b) the degree to which patterns of segregation by race and ethnicity exacerbate Black–White and Latino–White inequalities in exposure to suburban neighborhood disadvantage. Black–White segregation exacerbates Black exposure to neighborhood poverty across space, especially in cities and older suburbs, while Latino–White segregation worsens Latino exposure to poor neighborhoods in cities as well as farther-flung rural and exurban areas.
... In urban planning this has meant close attention to neighborhoods of "racially concentrated" poverty that are conceptually and politically understood as disadvantaged and dysfunctional. As Howell (2019) notes, this "nearly exclusive analytical focus … has the unintentional consequence of downplaying the role that advantaged neighborhoods play" (p. 420) in producing and perpetuating regional inequality. ...
... The exclusivity of high-end White space is the primary driver of wealth disparities and is a system that self-perpetuates. Property wealth begets better education, finances greater investments in human capital, and allows for intergenerational transfer of wealth that solidifies class standing and related privilege (see, for example, Howell's [2019] longitudinal analysis of data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics showing that "neighborhood contextual effects are strongest for White residents in the most advantaged spaces"; p. 433). ...
Problem, research strategy, and findings: The ability of planning to address America’s urban problems of inequality, crime, housing, education, and segregation is hampered by a relative neglect of Whiteness and its role in shaping urban outcomes. We offer a justification for centering Whiteness within urban planning scholarship and practice that would examine its role shaping and perpetuating regional and racial injustices in the American city. The focus of planners, scholars, and public discourse on the “dysfunctions” of communities of color, notably poverty, high levels of segregation, and isolation, diverts attention from the structural systems that produce and reproduce the advantages of affluent and White neighborhoods. Planners and planning scholars frequently invoke a “legacy of injustice” with regard to concentrated poverty and disadvantage but not in regard to neighborhoods of White affluence. One is segregated and problematized and the other is idealized.
Takeaway for practice: Planners and planning scholars need to understand the role of Whiteness, in particular White affluence, to assess the potential impacts of planning interventions. Doing so will inform a wider range of planning approaches to problems of racial and spatial equity.
... White children in affluent neighborhoods may benefit more from living in such a neighborhood because they are more likely to belong to the majority race within the neighborhood and, therefore, more likely to be treated as "insiders" with better access to rewards. A recent study found that White people are concentrated in the most advantaged neighborhoods, whereas Black people are widely distributed across different types of neighborhoods (Howell 2019). Further, the study finds that White people experience more benefits of living in advantaged areas compared to Black people. ...
... Further, the study finds that White people experience more benefits of living in advantaged areas compared to Black people. Specifically, "this pattern speaks to the fact that the mechanisms that are enabling advantaged residents in advantaged neighborhoods are ones that excludes black residents and enhancing white residents" (Howell 2019). On the other hand, when compared to Black women, White women were more susceptible to childhood experiences of disadvantaged neighborhood environmental characteristics including poverty, unemployment, and school dropout (Vartanian 1999). ...
The neighborhood and family context in which children grow profoundly influences their development. Informed by ecological systems theory and social disorganization theory, we hypothesized that adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) mediate the relationship between neighborhood disorder and child externalizing and internalizing behaviors, and that these pathways vary by race/ethnicity. We conducted secondary data analysis using Fragile Families and Child Well-being study data. To test hypothesized pathways, we performed a mediation path analysis on a sample of 3001 mothers of children (ages 3 and 5) living in 20 U.S. cities. A moderated mediation path analysis was used to test racial/ethnic differences in hypothesized pathways. We found that living in disordered neighborhoods increased children’s likelihood of exhibiting externalizing and internalizing behaviors through childhood ACEs. Compared to Black and Hispanic children, White children’s ACEs were more susceptible to negative neighborhood environment effects, suggesting that White children’s behavioral health may be more indirectly affected by neighborhood disorder. The finding that ACEs mediated the pathway from neighborhood disorder to child behavior problems provides opportunity for child psychiatrists and pediatricians to interrupt negative pathways by providing interventions for children and families. Our findings on racial/ethnic differences highlight the need for culturally sensitive programming to address children’s behavior problems.
... No studies have examined whether White spaces are conversely protective from police violence in a police encounter. From systematic studies of Whiteness, White privilege, and White residential neighborhoods, we have reason to suspect that this may also translate to police interactions and police violence (Feldman et al. 2019;Howell 2019a;Lipsitz 1995). Moreover, some recent qualitative work on policing more broadly (not police use of force per se), has demonstrated important differences in police behavior in their interactions with the public depending on the race of the individual in the encounter and within the context of different kinds of neighborhoods (Gordon 2022). ...
Research has now well documented that minoritized individuals, particularly Blacks, are more likely to be victims of police use of force in the United States. However, the various social and physical environments in which racial/ethnic minority victimization is more likely to occur remain poorly understood. Some evidence has suggested that a higher percentage of minorities in residential space and racial/ethnic residential segregation are both related to a higher rate of police use of force. Here, we examine how spatial clustering of Black, Latino, and White residents relate to both fatal and non-fatal police use of force using data at both the national level and in a subset analysis of Texas. We find that Black and Latino clustering are related to higher rates of overall fatal and non-fatal police use of force, as well as higher rates of both Black and Latino victimization respectively. However, the opposite is the case for White clustering. White clustering across neighborhoods is negatively related to both fatal and non-fatal police use of force. Moreover, when broken out by race, White clustering is unrelated to the White victimization rate. These patterns suggest that White neighborhoods are relatively advantaged spaces when the police interact with civilians.
... This underscores the importance of questioning the legitimacy of policies that rationalize the social position of established groups. Similarly, it stresses the need to investigate affluent and exclusionary urban areas, as well as their attempts to defend exclusionary spaces and guard their advantages, benefits, and protections under assumed liberal democratic norms (Goetz, Damiano, and Williams 2019;Goetz, Williams, and Damiano 2020;Howell 2019;Steil 2022). ...
Several limitations have thwarted the implementation of California housing law for over fifty years. This paper sheds light on the evolution of municipal-state relations at a period of reform by analyzing the contentious implementation of state housing law in Orange County, California, a region of concentrated affluence. Systemic privilege has historically allowed some jurisdictions to influence decision-making at higher levels, skewing housing policy and planning outcomes. Nonetheless, and despite contention between different government levels and localities, the leverage of reactionary local politics is weakening.
... Although a rich body of research does exist that focuses on the socioeconomic resources in the inter-generational transmission of education, we know less about the role of integration factors, such as citizenship and host country language skills, which indicate the degree of integration into the host society, in achieving tertiary education among the second and third generation minorities who often grow up in lower socio-economic status families and in segregated neighbourhoods and schools. Existing studies on the educational outcomes of minority children focuses, instead, on grades (Galster et al., 2016;Sykes & Kuyper, 2013;Pong & Hao, 2007), years of schooling (Andersson et al., 2023;Howell, 2019;Fleury & Gilles, 2018) or attendance at university or any post-secondary institution (Chetty et al., 2016;Palardy, 2015;Bauer & Riphahn, 2006). These are all important aspects of education. ...
... The aforementioned literature suggests that students who are non-Hispanic White and students who are men may be at greater risk for NPS. However, a compounding privilege lens (inspired by intersectionality) to understanding resilience and risk for NPS is warranted to better explain why these demographic groups are most at-risk (for another example of this approach, see Howell, 2019). Resilience may provide a buffer against NPS for marginalized communities on a societal level. ...
Background: In this study, we examined why non-Hispanic White cisgender men are more likely than other subgroups to misuse prescription stimulants in college. The objective of the current study was to use a strength-based framework to examine intersectional demographic predictors. Methods: We examined gender and race/ethnicity as predictors of nonmedical prescription stimulant use (NPS) among college students. We also investigated resilience as a moderator. This report uses data from an online multisite study conducted at seven universities with 4,764 undergraduate students (70.1% women and 52.0% People of Color). Results: We found that college students who were cisgender men and non-Hispanic White used NPS significantly more than students who identified as another gender and as People of Color. There was also a buffering effect of resilience between race/ethnicity and NPS, such that resilience predicted lower NPS for People of Color, but not non-Hispanic White people 28% of the time. Conclusions: It may be that Students of Color are more resilient than non-Hispanic White students, and this resilience is protective of NPS use in college. Importantly, a compounding-privilege and/or intersectional approach to identity is crucial to fully understanding behavior (in this case NPS) in a diversity of college students; future studies should continue to use and develop such approaches.
... They rely on pieces of a traditional segregation framework-e.g., the Dissimilarity Index (D), and a focus on residential mobility-but they extend dominant approaches by questioning our focus on (Black) disadvantage and adding a temporal component. This research is a welcomed addition to the literature suggesting greater attention to White advantage when explaining the perpetuation of Black-White inequality (see e.g., Howell, 2019aHowell, , 2019bReece, 2020). But perhaps more importantly, Gabriel et al. offer a stepping-stone for questioning the White-centric nature of a wider range of methodological and analytical practices commonly used in the study of demographic processes (for a similar call to adjust our approach to studying segregation centered on spatial considerations see the commentary in this journal by Wong, 2021). ...
... These dynamics amplify cognitive skills' role in shaping neighborhood attainment and reinforce inequality. Exploring the link between skills and residential sorting is particularly important as urban stratification scholarship expands to encompass the mechanisms driving the persistence of not only concentrated disadvantage but also of concentrated affluence (Howell 2019;Owens 2016;Reardon and Bischoff 2011). A concrete hypothesis follows: & Hypothesis 1: In contemporary housing markets, parents with higher cognitive skill levels are more likely to sort into neighborhoods that are societally defined as high in status/desirability, even after parents' and neighborhoods' sociodemographic characteristics are accounted for. ...
Highly skilled parents deploy distinct strategies to cultivate their children’s development, but little is known about how parental cognitive skills interact with metropolitan opportunity structures and residential mobility to shape a major domain of inequality in children’s lives: the neighborhood. We integrate multiple literatures to develop hypotheses on parental skill-based sorting by neighborhood socioeconomic status and public school test scores, which we test using an original follow-up of the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey. These data include more than a decade’s worth of residential histories for households with children that are linked to census, geographic information system, and educational administrative data. We construct discrete-choice models of neighborhood selection that account for heterogeneity among household types, incorporate the unique spatial structure of Los Angeles County, and include a wide range of neighborhood factors. The results show that parents’ cognitive skills interact with neighborhood socioeconomic status to predict residential selection after accounting for, and confirming, the expected influences of race, income, education, housing market conditions, and spatial proximity. Among parents in the upper/upper-middle class, cognitive skills predict sorting on average public school test scores rather than neighborhood socioeconomic status. Overall, we reveal skill-based contextual sorting as an overlooked driver of urban stratification.
... Prior research has shown a modest positive association between neighborhood SES and children's academic achievement, though the connection between educational outcomes and markers of neighborhood advantage and disadvantage appears to be stronger for White children than for Black children (Howell, 2019;Turley, 2003). Such findings suggest that it is important to consider both structural and social factors to understand what role neighborhood contexts may play in shaping the differential returns to family SES found in this study. ...
Theory and limited research indicate that race and socioeconomic status (SES) interact dynamically to shape children’s developmental contexts and academic achievement, but little scholarship examines how race and SES intersect to shape Black–White achievement gaps across development. We used data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998–99 (N ≈ 9,100)—which tracks a nationally representative cohort of children in the United States—to investigate how race and family SES (i.e., parental education and household income) intersect to shape trajectories of academic skills development from kindergarten entry through the spring of eighth grade. Results reveal that household income and parental education were differentially related to academic development, with Black–White gaps narrowing (and Black children’s skills growing slightly faster) at higher income gradients but widening (and Black children’s skills developing more slowly) at higher levels of educational attainment. Despite performance advantages at kindergarten entry, large baseline disparities meant that higher-income Black students underperformed their White peers by middle school, whereas Black students with better-educated parents consistently trailed their White counterparts. Taken together, these findings suggest that failure to examine how race and SES intersect to shape achievement gaps may obscure complex patterns of educational inequality.
In the era of school choice, much research has examined how families access nonneighborhood schools, but little attention has been given to families’ prior connections to nonneighborhood locations. This study examines how activity spaces —the places where people work, play, worship, and otherwise spend time—relate to school enrollments and, by extension, school segregation. Combining longitudinal data from the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey with school and neighborhood demographics, the study tests hypotheses derived from the social structural sorting perspective, which predict that families’ activity spaces will influence school sorting processes. First, among schools more than two miles from the home, families were twice as likely to enroll when the school was near a previous activity location. Second, net of residence, racially segregating prior activity spaces (consisting of higher own-group proportions than the neighborhood) predicted racially segregating school enrollments (in schools with higher own-group proportions than the neighborhood school). The results demonstrate links between activity space segregation and school segregation, with implications for larger patterns of social and educational stratification in the twenty-first century.
Residential segregation by race and class is a durable form of inequality. Yet, we know less about how the unequal sorting of families into neighborhoods and schools occurs. Drawing on interviews with a diverse sample of 156 families, we examine whether residential and school decisions are connected and how they differ by household income. We find that, for higher-income families, residential decisions maintain and build on existing educational advantages, while lower-income parents churn between both houses and schools, doing the continuous work of compensating for unequal settings. Only the highest income—mostly White—parents report that they can combine their housing and school decisions and achieve satisfaction in both domains. In contrast, housing insecurity and unequal, racially-stratified geographies constrain less advantaged, primarily minority families to prioritize affordable shelter over school choice. When such trade-offs lead to inadequate educational experiences for their children, these families try to improve their children’s schools through re-optimization strategies, withdrawing and re-enrolling them into different schools. While some parents perceive that these changes benefit their children, such school transfers can also increase educational instability. More generally, the lack of quality schools in affordable neighborhoods burdens families by requiring compensatory strategies to resolve housing and educational shortcomings.
Race is a key dimension of society yet is frequently omitted from family research. I conducted a systematic review of recent issues of the Journal of Marriage and Family to determine how frequently and in what context race is mentioned. Race is mentioned in just 67% of the publications examined and often receives only cursory mention. The dominant use of race was as a demographic control variable in quantitative analyses, and in some cases was not discussed anywhere in the main text. Racism received even less attention. I draw on some foundational themes in race scholarship (e.g., race measurement, intersectionality, critical Whiteness studies, and structural racism) to offer concrete recommendations for moving family research forward. I encourage family scholars to include more discussion on why race matters; to remember that racialized processes affect White samples, too; and to name how racism enters into family dynamics. Initiating these shifts in the treatment of race will require changes in the field, such as widespread training on race and racism.
Recent theoretical arguments suggest that, in addition to ongoing, overt racial housing discrimination and unequal access to resources, multiple subtle housing search processes are racially stratified and contribute to persistent racial segregation. Yet, little prior research has examined these processes. The present paper helps to fill this gap by investigating the racialized differences in the subtle ways that individuals use online housing search tools and identify real estate agents to assist them through the housing search process. To do so, we rely on novel survey data collected by Redfin from 2647 housing consumers using multiple online platforms to search for housing in markets across the United States and examine racialized differences in the likelihood of homebuyers attempting various types of activities using online housing search tools, successfully using the online search tools, and methods of identifying real estate agents with whom to work. While the nature of the data preclude definitive conclusions, our findings point to significant racialized differences in attempting, and successfully completing, online activities across three different ‘types’ of online tool engagement—early search, neighborhood search, and housing unit—as well as in identifying real estate agents. After reviewing our results, we discuss the implications of these findings for persistent racial residential stratification, and directions for future research.
Unsafe rental units are disproportionately located in communities of color, resulting in numerous detrimental effects for residents’ health and socioeconomic well-being. Yet, scholars disagree regarding the mechanisms driving this phenomenon. Exogenous capitalism theories emphasize socioeconomic factors while setter-colonial racial capitalism theories emphasize the racist policies and practices that incentivize unequal investment and maintenance. We empirically adjudicate between these mechanisms by merging restricted-access versions of the American Housing Survey, the Rental Housing Finance Survey, and the American Community Survey at a Census Restricted Data Center. Our findings demonstrate neighborhood White proportion is a key mechanism shaping the condition of rental units even when controlling for neighborhood socioeconomic status, property features, and renter demographics. We argue these results support settler-colonial racial capitalism theories and discuss the implications of these findings for future research and housing policy.
The geography of economic opportunity and residential segregation are important factors driving racial disparities in employment outcomes. We present here the changing landscape of opportunity in large metropolitan areas in the United States to describe how the spatial structure of opportunity is evolving. Using decomposable inequality indices, we break down the spatial inequality of opportunity into two components: inequality within subareas (inner cities, inner suburbs, and outer suburbs) and inequality between subareas. According to our findings, economic opportunity is primarily driven by inequality within subareas. The situation is particularly evident in metropolitan areas where suburban employment is growing concurrently with the suburbanization of Black and Hispanic populations. Our findings suggest that the geography of metropolitan opportunity in the U.S. is changing in ways that will alter our traditional understanding of the relationship between race, space, and economic opportunity.
Kain's spatial mismatch hypothesis (SMH) (1968) highlights the segregation of Black population in the inner city as well as the decentralization of jobs, both of which played a role in the poor labor market outcomes for Black residents in the inner city. Demographic and economic changes in U.S. metropolitan areas since the late 20th century have transformed the urban spatial structure. This paper aims to revisit the SMH and investigate whether the spatial pattern of mismatch has changed as a result of geographic shifts in the Black population. This paper specifically examines how the suburbanization of the Black population has affected the geographic patterns of mismatch and whether the mismatch is disappearing in the major U.S. metropolitan areas. Using spatial measures of mismatch, this paper presents intra‐metropolitan spatial mismatch patterns that capture the clustering of jobs and the Black population based on their relative distributions, showing that the overall level of spatial mismatch declined in major U.S. metropolitan areas between 2000 and 2015. However, geographical evidence reveals that the spatial mismatch has shifted to the outer suburbs, replicating city‐suburb spatial inequality, implying that although mismatch may have declined in the inner city due to Black suburbanization, spatial mismatch continue to persist in U.S. metropolitan areas in Black suburbs. The findings also demonstrate that although spatial mismatch generally declined in the inner city, it increased in cities with high inner city polarization, particularly New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Seattle.
Intergroup contact theory has received much quantitative support. However few efforts have attempted to apply qualitative methodologies to understand the perceptions of individuals who experience these contacts. we conducted 19 interviews to explore the perceptions of stakeholders of a community-based fitness program whose goal was to increase intergroup contact among its stakeholders. Participants reflected on the program reducing their social isolation, increasing opportunities for engagement outside one’s own group, and expanded world views.
For decades, social theorists have posited—and descriptive accounts have shown—that students isolated by both social class and ethnicity suffer extreme deprivations that limit the effectiveness of equal-opportunity interventions. Even educational programs that yield positive results for moderately disadvantaged students may not prove beneficial for those who possess less of the economic, social, and cultural capital that play a critical role in improving educational outcomes. Yet evaluations of school choice and other educational interventions seldom estimate programmatic effects on severely disadvantaged students who are isolated by both ethnicity and social class. We experimentally estimate differential effects of a 1997 New York City school voucher intervention on college attainment for minority students by household income and mother’s education. Postsecondary outcomes as of 2017 come from the National Student Clearinghouse. The severely deprived did not benefit from the intervention despite substantial positive effects on college enrollments and degree attainment for the moderately disadvantaged. School choice programs and other interventions or public policies may need to pay greater attention to ensuring that families possess the requisite forms of capital—human, economic, social, and cultural—to realize their intended benefits.
As any good American urbanist knows: race matters. But precisely how does it matter? How have the pervasive and enduring modalities of racism (especially anti-Blackness) shaped the American metropolis over the last decades? Several influential attempts to answer these questions have focused heavily on racism’s momentous impacts on housing and related spatial practices. Such accounts have garnered intensified attention with the appearance of Richard Rothstein’s widely heralded The Color of Law. My central contention is that most conventional treatments of how racism impacted mid-century housing and spatial practices (including Rothstein’s) are deeply flawed. While almost obsessively centering racism as determinative, they nevertheless underestimate how fundamental it is to America’s institutions. I focus particularly on market institutions as they shape residential property values. Doing so reveals both a significant historical rereading of mid-century urban America’s highly racialized housing and spatial practices, as well as a more powerful account of ongoing racial dispossessions.
Much of the failure of the accountability framework introduced in the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) and continued under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) can be attributable to lofty goals and lack of sufficient mechanisms to achieve those goals. NCLB set about to guarantee access, funding, and governance to high-performing schools for all. The threat of sanction and the ability for parents to opt out of the failing neighborhood public school were designed to achieve accountability, representatives, and equality; however, it proved little incentive for widespread improvement in the public schools. Unfortunately, there were no better schools available for students to choose, and in most cities, government remained the exclusive provider and near-exclusive producer of education services. Accountability through high-stakes testing did increase accountability to some degree as it shed light on poor-performing schools. As a result, parents discovered that far too many schools were failing to provide a quality education. The final chapter in this text develops a model for an open and competitive market for education. Key elements are discussed as well as the role of an accreditation framework for accountability.
Ethnographic and quantitative studies of urban neighborhoods have played an essential role in contrasting deeply held stereotypes, highlighting systemic injustices, and shaping federal urban policy. However, the majority of these studies focus on a small slice of the most marginalized urban neighborhoods, leaving much unknown about the vast majority of communities and how to address persisting inequality. This piece examines these empirical and theoretical shortcomings and proposes integrating critical theory into empirical studies of neighborhoods. This new theoretical approach has implications not only for how scholars conduct their research but also for how this research is applied in public policy. Suggestions for future studies and policy are discussed.
The authors present a straightforward method for assessing symmetry and asymmetry in the effect of an independent variable, on the basis of its direction of change, on a dependent variable in statistical models and provide two different empirical illustrations: (1) the effect of economic change on electricity production in nations and (2) the effect of change in income on wealth accumulation among individuals. In so doing, the authors also demonstrate specific ways to illustrate and interpret asymmetrical effects. Finally, the authors note a variety of theoretical reasons to expect asymmetry and suggest areas in which it may be observed.
The urban and educational literature has recently begun to focus on the increase of concentrated poverty in inner-city neighborhoods
and the educational failure of youth often associated with living in these neighborhoods. The current study examines this
issue by identifying which neighborhood characteristics influence educational achievement and what mechanisms mediate these
associations. Using the National Educational Longitudinal Study of 1988 linked to 1990 census information at the neighborhood
level, the current study finds not only that neighborhood characteristics predict educational outcomes but also that the strength
of the predictions often rivals that associated with more commonly cited family- and school-related factors. When considering
how neighborhood characteristics influence educational outcomes, theorists have proposed several mediating processes, including
collective socialization, social control, social capital, perception of opportunity, and institutional characteristics. The
current study reveals that these mediators account for about 40% of the neighborhood effect on educational achievement, with
collective socialization having the strongest influence. Also discussed are the theoretical and policy implications of this
study and directions for future research.
Differences in the reporting units of data from diverse sources and changes in units over time are common obstacles to analysis of areal data. We compare common approaches to this problem in the context of changes over time in the boundaries of U.S. census tracts. In every decennial census, many tracts are split, consolidated, or changed in other ways from the previous boundaries to reflect population growth or decline. We examine two interpolation methods to create a bridge between years, one that relies only on areal weighting and another that also introduces population weights. Results demonstrate that these approaches produce substantially different estimates for variables that involve population counts, but they have a high degree of convergence for variables defined as rates or averages. Finally, the article describes the Longitudinal Tract Database (LTDB), through which we are making available public-use tools to implement these methods to create estimates within 2010 tract boundaries for any tract-level data (from the census or other sources) that are available for prior years as early as 1970.
The study of neighbourhood effects has spread within Europe over the past decade. This article extends previous European research by focusing on Oslo, Norway. The main question relates to individual development among adolescents: does the social composition of the neighbourhood affect the socioeconomic status later in life? The study applies a multilevel approach and utilises longitudinal register-based data. The results reveal small but significant effects of neighbourhood deprivation on educational achievement and, even less pronounced, on income. Some effects on unemployment are also observed, but only in the short run. The strongest associations obtain for concentration of welfare recipients in the neighbourhood, which emphasises the importance of social value and social participation. A crude comparison suggests that neighbourhood effects in Oslo are slightly smaller/larger than similar effects in Swedish/UK cities.
The effects of neighborhood characteristics on the development of children and adolescents are estimated, using two data sets, each of which contains information gathered about individual children and the families and neighborhoods in which they reside. There are reasonably powerful neighborhood effects-particularly the effects of the presence of affluent neighbors-on childhood IQ, teenage births, and school-leaving, even after the differences in the socioeconomic characteristics of families are adjusted for. The study finds that white teenagers benefit more from the presence of affluent neighbors than do black teenagers.
The authors draw on Klinenberg's (2002) ethnography and recent neighborhood theory to explain community-level variation in mortality during the July 1995 Chicago heat wave. They examine the impact of neighborhood structural disadvantage on heat wave mortality and consider three possible intervening mechanisms: social network interaction, collective efficacy, and commercial conditions. Combining Census and mortality data with the 1995 Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods Community Survey and Systematic Social Observation, the authors estimate hierarchical Poisson models of death rates both during the 1995 heat wave and comparable, temporally proximate July weeks (1990-94, 1996). They find that neighborhood affluence was negatively associated with heat wave mortality. Consistent with Klinenberg's ethnographic study of the Chicago heat wave, commercial decline was positively associated with heat wave mortality and explains the affluence effect. Where commercial decline was low, neighborhoods were largely protected from heat-related mortality. Although social network interaction and collective efficacy did not influence heat wave mortality, collective efficacy was negatively associated with mortality during comparable July weeks (when no heat wave occurred). Unequal distribution of community-based resources had important implications for geographic differences in survival rates during the Chicago heat wave, and may be relevant for other disasters.
The aim of this study is to estimate the impact of neighbourhoods on educational outcome for adolescents in Sweden. Using a multilevel statistical approach and the PLACE database that consists of a census of individuals in 1990-2000 in Sweden, the paper explores different domains of neighbourhood characteristics that predict educational outcomes in adolescents. Educational achievement in year 2000 was measured for three cohorts, geocoded to their neighbourhood environments. It was found that neighbourhood characteristics related to socioeconomic resources and demographic stability are predictors of individual educational outcomes. A strong association between neighbourhood socio-cultural capital variables and education were also observed. Despite national policies on availability and access to education in Sweden, there are substantial inequalities in educational outcomes that are not simply a result of differences in individual characteristics.
Theory suggests that neighborhood effects depend not only on where individuals live today, but also on where they lived in the past. Previous research, however, usually measured neighborhood context only once and did not account for length of residence, thereby understating the detrimental effects of long-term neighborhood disadvantage. This study investigates the effects of duration of exposure to disadvantaged neighborhoods on high school graduation. It follows 4,154 children in the PSID, measuring neighborhood context once per year from age 1 to 17. The analysis overcomes the problem of dynamic neighborhood selection by adapting novel methods of causal inference for time-varying treatments. In contrast to previous analyses, these methods do not "control away" the effect of neighborhood context operating indirectly through time-varying characteristics of the family, and thus they capture the full impact of a lifetime of neighborhood disadvantage. We find that sustained exposure to disadvantaged neighborhoods has a severe impact on high school graduation that is considerably larger than effects reported in prior research. Growing up in the most (compared to the least) disadvantaged quintile of neighborhoods is estimated to reduce the probability of graduation from 96% to 76% for black children, and from 95% to 87% for nonblack children.
This study examines how the neighborhood environments experienced over multiple generations of a family influence children's cognitive ability. Building on recent research showing strong continuity in neighborhood environments across generations of family members, the authors argue for a revised perspective on "neighborhood effects" that considers the ways in which the neighborhood environment in one generation may have a lingering impact on the next generation. To analyze multigenerational effects, the authors use newly developed methods designed to estimate unbiased treatment effects when treatments and confounders vary over time. The results confirm a powerful link between neighborhoods and cognitive ability that extends across generations. A family's exposure to neighborhood poverty across two consecutive generations reduces child cognitive ability by more than half a standard deviation. A formal sensitivity analysis suggests that results are robust to unobserved selection bias.
This article provides a comprehensive review of research on the effects of neighborhood residence on child and adolescent well-being. The first section reviews key methodological issues. The following section considers links between neighborhood characteristics and child outcomes and suggests the importance of high socioeconomic status (SES) for achievement and low SES and residential instability for behavioral/emotional outcomes. The third section identifies 3 pathways (institutional resources, relationships, and norms/collective efficacy) through which neighborhoods might influence development, and which represent an extension of models identified by C. Jencks and S. Mayer (1990) and R. J. Sampson (1992). The models provide a theoretical base for studying neighborhood mechanisms and specify different levels (individual, family, school, peer, community) at which processes may operate. Implications for an emerging developmental framework for research on neighborhoods are discussed.
Research in the USA provides evidence that neighbourhood conditions affect intergenerational mobility. However, what remains unclear is the extent to which the US context is unique in producing this influence. To examine this question, the present study directly compares neighbourhood effects on intergenerational mobility in the USA versus those in Germany – a country whose housing market and social welfare policies differ significantly from those in the USA. Results provide a blueprint for conducting cross-national neighbourhood effects studies and illuminate how the nature and severity of neighbourhood effects are nationally specific. These findings underscore the importance of considering how broader political contexts shape neighbourhood effects on intergenerational mobility – a consideration that has implications for proposed policy interventions.
In the 1980s and 1990s, researchers came to understand poor urban neighborhoods as blighted, depopulated areas, based on important ethnographic observations in a handful of cities. This image helped inform influential theories of social isolation and de‐institutionalization. However, few scholars have examined whether those observations were representative of poor neighborhoods nationwide—and whether they are representative today. Based on a descriptive analysis of the largest 100 U.S. metropolitan areas using normalized census tract boundaries, we document an important transformation in the conditions of poor neighborhoods. We find that the depopulation in poor neighborhoods often reported in cities such as Chicago and Baltimore was, in fact, typical across cities in 1990. Today, it is not. Moreover, heterogeneity across cities has increased: The experience of neighborhood poverty is likely to depend more today than in 1990 on the city in question. In fact, the most typically studied cities, such as Chicago, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Milwaukee, are increasingly atypical in this respect. Addressing today's core questions about neighborhood effects, how and why they matter, requires paying far greater attention to heterogeneity, conducting more ethnographic observation in ostensibly unconventional cities, and addressing the historically extreme conditions in a newly unique subset of cities.
Despite numerous legal interventions intended to mitigate racial discrimination in the United States, racial inequality persists in virtually every domain that matters for human well-being. To better understand the processes enabling this durable inequality, I undertake a case study of the housing market—a domain centrally linked to persistent, systemic disparity. I examine how racial stereotypes permeate the distinct but serially linked stages of the housing exchange process; the conditions under which stereotypes are deployed in each stage; and how such dynamics accumulate to affect ultimate processes of exclusion and inclusion. Drawing on one year of ethnographic fieldwork and more than 100 in-depth interviews in the Houston housing market, my findings demonstrate that widely shared, hierarchical stereotypes about race, supported by conditions such as network-necessitated rapport-building and discretion, compound discrimination across discrete stages of housing exchange. I argue that as this accumulation occurs, inequality between minorities and minority neighborhoods and whites and white neighborhoods is rendered durable.
The history of the U.S. housing market is bound up in systemic, explicit racism. However, little research has investigated whether racial inequality also persists in the contemporary appraisal industry and, if present, how it happens. The present article addresses this gap by centering the appraisal industry as a key housing market player in the reproduction of racial inequality. Using a census of all single-family tax-appraised homes in Harris County (Houston), Texas, the authors examine the influence of neighborhood racial composition on home values independent of home characteristics and quality; neighborhood housing stock, socioeconomic status, and amenities; and consumer housing demand. Noting that substantial neighborhood racial inequality in home values persists even when these variables are accounted for, the authors then use ethnographic and interview data to investigate the appraisal processes that enable this inequality to continue. The findings suggest that variation in appraisal methods coupled with appraisers’ racialized perceptions of neighborhoods perpetuates neighborhood racial disparities in home value. The authors conclude with suggestions for future research and policy interventions aimed at standardizing the appraisal process.
Despite long-term, documented declines in racialized attitudes, racial inequality persists. Scholars have theorized why this dissonance exists but few have empirically demonstrated how views can become more progressive while simultaneously maintaining inequality. The present study uses neighbourhood racial preferences and their influence on racial residential segregation to demonstrate how in a diversifying context residents can become more “accepting” while simultaneously maintaining the racial hierarchy, the opposite of what most of the literature currently assumes. Using data from three distinct sources in the United States, this research finds that U.S. residents are increasingly willing to live amidst diversity yet whites still concentrate in white neighbourhoods. In short, white Americans are more willing to live in diverse neighbourhoods than in the past, but they are not willing to desegregate. We argue this preserves racial inequality. We conclude with a discussion of our findings and their implications for future research and practice.
Research on residential inequality focuses heavily on adult economic outcomes as crucial components of the intergenerational transmission of poverty. Yet, empirical evidence on whether youth neighborhoods have a lasting impact on adult economic outcomes at the national level is scarce. Further, we know little about how youth neighborhood effects on adult economic outcomes manifest. This study uses 26 years (14 waves) of restricted panel data from the NLSY79 and the NLSY Children and Young Adults cohorts – data that have never been used to analyze long-term neighborhood effects – to examine whether youth neighborhood disadvantage impacts adult economic outcomes through sensitive years in childhood, teen socialization, duration effects, or cumulative effects. Sibling fixed effects models that net out unobserved effects of shared family characteristics suggest that youth neighborhood disadvantage increases joblessness and reduces income in adulthood. However, exposure across specific developmental stages of youth does not appear to act as a significant moderator while sustained exposure yields pernicious effects on adult economic outcomes. Moreover, these results are robust to alternative variable specifications and cousin fixed effects that net out potentially unobserved confounders, such as the inheritance of neighborhood disadvantage across three generations.
While recent research has stressed the importance of emotions in economic transactions, scholars have generally overlooked the role of market intermediaries in creating and sustaining emotional connections between buyers and particular products. Previous research posits that consumers' goals change as their feelings change, but the question of how these feelings change remains unanswered. Drawing on 27 months of fieldwork observing interactions between real estate agents and homebuyers, this article elaborates three processes by which market intermediaries evoke emotions from buyers: individualized matching, sequencing and highlighting market scarcity. These observations reveal how individual preference and consumption decisions are subject to situational structuring by market intermediaries. Furthermore, this article argues that sales transactions present scholars with untapped opportunities to understand how emotions impact economic transactions, as well as the crucial role that intermediaries play in creating and sustaining these emotions.
In recent years, researchers have increasingly noted the malleability of racial boundaries across time, context, and life course. Although this research has advanced our knowledge of the maintenance and perceptions of racial groups, it has introduced a new question: If we are attempting to best capture the actual variation in racial inequality, how should we operationalize race? Using the 2006 wave of the Portraits of American Life Study, a national-level, in-home survey with extensive race measures and oversamples of Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians, the authors identify five ways that race can be and to varying degrees is operationalized: census, combined race/ethnic, pentagon, triracial, and skin tone measures. Using the Vuong non-nested model tests, the authors compare the effectiveness of these five measurements in predicting three measures of social inequality: household income, education, and self-rated health. The authors find that overall, Hollinger’s ethnoracial pentagon is best able to capture existing inequality. Thus, for scholars attempting to understand variation in contemporary racial inequality, this research suggests that scholars should use five monoracial categories: White, Black, Hispanic, Native American and Asian.
Neighborhood effects scholarship suggests that neighborhoods may impart different effects across the early life-course because
children's interactions with neighborhood actors and institutions evolve across the stages of child development. This paper
expands our understanding of neighborhood effects on cognitive and non-cognitive development across childhood and early adolescence
by capitalizing on thirteen waves of restricted and never-before-used longitudinal data from the NLSY Child and Young Adult
(1986–2010) sample. The findings from within-child fixed-effects interaction models suggest that while younger children are
immune to neighborhood effects on their cognitive development, older children consistently suffer a steep penalty for growing
up in disadvantaged neighborhoods. This neighborhood disadvantage penalty persists among older children despite alternative
age constructs. Further, the results are robust to various adjustments for observed and unobserved sources of bias, model
specifications, and also manifest as cumulative and lagged effects.
The Moving to Opportunity (MTO) experiment offered randomly selected families housing vouchers to move from high-poverty housing projects to lower-poverty neighborhoods. We analyze MTO's impacts on children's long-term outcomes using tax data. We find that moving to a lower-poverty neighborhood when young (before age 13) increases college attendance and earnings and reduces single parenthood rates. Moving as an adolescent has slightly negative impacts, perhaps because of disruption effects. The decline in the gains from moving with the age when children move suggests that the duration of exposure to better environments during childhood is an important determinant of children's long-term outcomes. (JEL I31, I38, J13, R23, R38).
"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.
A series of policy shifts over the past decade promises to change how Americans decide where to send their children to school. In theory, the boom in standardized test scores and charter schools will allow parents to evaluate their assigned neighborhood school, or move in search of a better option. But what kind of data do parents actually use while choosing schools? Are there differences among suburban and urban families? How do parents’ choices influence school and residential segregation in America? Choosing Homes, Choosing Schools presents a breakthrough analysis of the new era of school choice, and what it portends for American neighborhoods. The distinguished contributors to Choosing Homes, Choosing Schools investigate the complex relationship between education, neighborhood social networks, and larger patterns of inequality. Paul Jargowsky reviews recent trends in segregation by race and class. His analysis shows that segregation between blacks and whites has declined since 1970, but remains extremely high. Moreover, white families with children are less likely than childless whites to live in neighborhoods with more minority residents. In her chapter, Annette Lareau draws on interviews with parents in three suburban neighborhoods to analyze school-choice decisions. Surprisingly, she finds that middle- and upper-class parents do not rely on active research, such as school tours or test scores. Instead, most simply trust advice from friends and other people in their network. Their decision-making process was largely informal and passive. Eliot Weinginer complements this research when he draws from his data on urban parents. He finds that these families worry endlessly about the selection of a school, and that parents of all backgrounds actively consider alternatives, including charter schools. Middle- and upper-class parents relied more on federally mandated report cards, district websites, and online forums, while working-class parents use network contacts to gain information on school quality. Little previous research has explored what role school concerns play in the preferences of white and minority parents for particular neighborhoods. Featuring innovative work from more than a dozen scholars, Choosing Homes, Choosing Schools adroitly addresses this gap and provides a firmer understanding of how Americans choose where to live and send their children to school.
This study examines whether neighborhood level collective socialization processes are racialized. It addresses whether Black and White students are affected differentially by their general neighborhood characteristics; whether the racial composition of positive and negative role models in a neighborhood shape student performance differently; and whether Black and White students receive differential benefit from the presence of same-race role models. Using the National Educational Longitudinal Study (NELS) of 1988 linked to 1990 Census information at the neighborhood level, the current study finds that race generally does not critically influence neighborhood effects on educational achievement. Theoretical implications of these results are discussed, and I recommend that the when considering who can act as a role model for ethnic minority youth, policy makers should consider a broader range of individuals than just same-race individuals. This research suggests that White adults may also be able to positively affect change for students “at risk” for underachievement. Finally, another take-away message of this research is that the talents and abilities of all neighborhood adults need to be fully tapped to address the problem of educational underachievement.
The “underclass” debate of the 1980s often concerned the relative importance of neighborhood racial and economic isolation to the educational challenges facing many African Americans. This review organizes the neighborhood effects research that has emerged since that time according to these differing perspectives. The review’s triangulated approach assesses (a) the association of a neighborhood’s racial segregation and low level of economic resources to less academic success, (b) whether certain neighborhood social processes lower children’s educational performance, and (c) if residential opportunity leads to improvements in educational performance after children leave impoverished and segregated neighborhoods for integrated and middle-class areas. The analysis reveals that the education of African Americans appears less affected by neighborhood conditions than the two perspectives suggest, at least as they are currently conceptualized and measured. The results are contextualized with the author’s identification of areas in the field where more research is needed, the problems and promise associated with particular analytical strategies, and other social, school-based, and human development dynamics that complicate the estimation of neighborhood influences in education.
Supported by persistent educational inequality and growth of the field of neighborhood effects research, this meta-analysis investigates the relative association of neighborhood advantage and disadvantage to educational outcomes; the consistency of associations across different educational indicators; and the moderating influence of model specifications within primary studies. Using multilevel statistical methodology, this synthesis finds that studies of the relationship between the presence of higher income neighbors and education outcomes produce effect-sizes that are more often significant; in keeping with the hypothesized direction of their effects; and of greater magnitude than similar investigations of low SES effects. These results appeared consistent after disaggregating the effect-sizes according to the type of educational indicator and controlling for differences in the specifications of the primary study models. A discussion of the findings, alternative hypotheses and implications for policy and research conclude the paper.
Studies of the persistence of social stratification rely heavily on students' experience in secondary schools. In this study, outcomes for a randomly selected panel of Baltimore children, followed from age 6 to age 22, demonstrate that first graders' social contexts and personal resources explain educational attainment levels in early adulthood about as well as do similar resources measured in adolescence. Years of schooling and the highest level of school attempted respond most strongly to family SES, but parental psychological support and the child's own temperament/disposition had substantial effects on first-grade academic outcomes. The predictive power of race, gender, SES, and neighborhood quality measured in first grade on educational status at age 22 supports Lucas's "effectively maintained inequality."
Using sibling data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, this article examines the effects of child and adolescent neighborhood conditions on adult income. Estimates from fixed-effect models and ordinary least squares regression (OLS) models are compared at four stages of childhood development, with three important findings. First, OLS models that include extensive control variables do not necessarily overstate the effects of neighborhoods. Second, neighborhoods have both linear and nonlinear relationships with adult economic well-being. Third, neighborhoods exert effects on even the youngest children.
Although family life has an important impact on children's life chances, the mechanisms through which parents transmit advantages are imperfectly understood. An ethnographic data set of white children and black children approximately 10 years old shows the effects of social class on interactions inside the home. Middle-class parents engage in concerted cultivation by attempting to foster children's talents through organized leisure activities and extensive reasoning. Working-class and poor parents engage in the accomplishment of natural growth, providing the conditions under which children can grow but leaving leisure activities to children themselves. These parents also use directives rather than reasoning. Middle-class children, both white and black, gain an emerging sense of entitlement from their family life. Race had much less impact than social class. Also, differences in a cultural logic of childrearing gave parents and their children differential resources to draw on in their interactions with professionals and other adults outside the home. Middle-class children gained individually insignificant but cumulatively important advantages. Working-class and poor children did not display the same sense of entitlement or advantages. Some areas of family life appeared exempt from the effects of social class, however.
In what follows we critically assess a selection of the works on urban poverty that followed the publication of WJ Wilson's The Truly Disadvantaged (1987), with a particular focus on the family, the neighborhood, and culture. We frame our discussion by assessing the broad explanations of the increased concentration of poverty in urban neighborhoods characteristic of the 1970s and 1980s. Then, in the section on the family, we address the rising out-of-wedlock and disproportionately high teenage birthrates of poor urban women. Next, we critique the literature on neighborhood effects. Finally, in the discussion of culture, we examine critically the new efforts at complementing structural explanations with cultural accounts. We conclude by calling for more comparative, cross-regional, and historical studies, broader conceptions of urban poverty, and a greater focus on Latinos and other ethnic groups.
Education correlates strongly with most important social and economic outcomes such as eco-nomic success, health, family stability, and social connections. Theories of stratification and selection cre-ated doubts about whether education actually caused good things to happen. Because schools and colleges select who continues and does not, it was easy to imagine that education added little of substance. Evidence now tips the balance away from bias and selection and in favor of substance. Investments in education pay off for individuals in many ways. The size of the direct effect of education varies among individuals and demographic groups. Education affects individuals and groups who are less likely to pursue a college education more than traditional college students. A smaller literature on "social returns" to education indi-cates that communities, states, and nations also benefit from increased education of their populations; some estimates imply that the social returns exceed the private returns.
The disproportionate number of individuals who are obese or overweight in the low-income U.S. population has raised interest in the influence of neighborhood conditions and public assistance programs on weight and health. Generally, neighborhood effects and program participation effects have been explored in separate studies. We unite these two areas of inquiry, using the 1968-2005 Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) to examine the long-term effects of childhood Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participation, neighborhood conditions, and the interaction of these two, on adult body mass index (BMI). Using sibling fixed-effects models to account for selection bias, we find that relative to children in other low-income families, children in SNAP-recipient households have higher average adult BMI values. However, the effects of childhood SNAP usage are sensitive to both residential neighborhood and age at receipt. For those growing up in advantaged neighborhoods, projected adult BMI is higher for children in SNAP-recipient households than for children in low-income, nonrecipient households. In contrast, for those growing up in less-advantaged areas, adult BMI differences between children in SNAP-recipient and those in low-income, nonrecipient households are small. SNAP usage during preschool years (0 to 4) has no impact on adult BMI scores. However, at later childhood ages, the time elapsed receiving SNAP income increases adult BMI values relative to a condition of low-income nonreceipt.
This study reports early impacts on youth's outcomes from the Yonkers Project, a quasi-experimental study in which low-income Black and Latino families who resided in economically and racially segregated neighborhoods were selected via lottery to relocate to middle-class, primarily White neighborhoods. Youth 8–18 years old who moved (n = 147) as well as a demographically similar group of youth who remained in the original neighborhoods (n = 114) responded to surveys focusing on a range of outcomes administered approximately 2 years following relocation. Results of multiple regression analyses revealed that 8–18-year-old youth who moved to middle-income neighborhoods experienced less victimization, disorder, and access to illegal substances relative to those who remained in high-poverty neighborhoods. Among 8–9-year-old youth, those who moved from high- to low-poverty neighborhoods reported fewer behavior and family relationship problems and less delinquency than their counterparts who did not move. A reversal of this trend was found among older youth, 16–18 years of age, with mover youth experiencing more problems relative to stayer youth. Few program effects were found for 10–15-year-old youth. Residential moves of this sort may be most effective for families with younger children.
This study explores racial differences in the effect of neighborhood income on children’s test scores, self-esteem, and behavior, using data from both the Census and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics Child Development Supplement. This study finds that as neighborhood income increases, test scores and behavior improve significantly for white children but not for black children. Increased neighborhood income affects only black children when there is a high-proportion of blacks in the neighborhood. For white children, an increase in the number of neighborhood peers known by name increases the effects of neighbors’ income. In addition, neighborhood effects are strongest for children who have lived in their neighborhoods for three or more years. This study makes progress toward explaining the mechanisms by which neighborhoods affect children and how these mechanisms differ by race.
Studies have shown that neighborhood conditions and experiences may individually or collectively impact health. Using 38 years of longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), we clarify the relationship between child and adult neighborhood quality and self-reported adult health, using sibling fixed effects models. Overall, we find support for positive long-term health effects, both for growing up in affluent neighborhoods and for growing up in neighborhoods where one is surrounded by comparative advantage. Relative to childhood neighborhood factors, adult neighborhoods have little to no effect in almost every model specification. We find mixed evidence, as well, that these relationships are stronger for nonwhites than for whites. Our findings suggest that childhood is a critical point for intervention in the long-term health effects of residential conditions.
Studies that attempt to measure the impact of neighborhoods on children's outcomes are susceptible to bias because families choose where to live. As a result, the effect of family unobservables, such as the importance parents place on their children's welfare, and other unobservables that are common to geographically clustered households, may be mistakenly attributed to neighborhood influences. Previous studies that attempt to correct for this selection bias have used questionable instrumental variables. This paper introduces an approach based on the observation that the latent factors associated with neighborhood choice do not vary across siblings. Therefore, family residential changes provide a source of neighborhood background variation that is free of the family-specific heterogeneity biases associated with neighborhood selection. Using a sample of multichild families whose children are separated in age by at least three years, I estimate family fixed effect equations of children's educational outcomes. The fixed effect results suggest that the impact of neighborhoods may exist even when family-specific unobservables are controlled. This finding is robust to many changes to estimation techniques, outcome measures, variable definitions, and samples but is sensitive to the exact formulation of the neighborhood measure.
Stuck in Place: Urban Neighborhoods and the End of Progress toward Racial Equality
- Patrick Sharkey
School Context and Educational Outcomes: Results from a Quasi-Experimental Study
- Rebecca Casciano
- Douglas S Massey
American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass
- Douglas Massey
- Nancy Denton
Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect
- Robert J Sampson