Equality of Opportunity and the Importance of Place Summary of a Workshop (2002) / Chapter Skim
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3. How Place Matters
3. How Place Matters
Pages 22-51
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From page 22... ...
Presenters sought to capture current trends in inner-city neighborhoods; identify the particular mechanisms of observed neighborhood effects; and discuss how to overcome barriers to child and adolescent development, employment, and health and well-being. The content of these papers and the discussion the papers generated are summarized in this chapter.
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From page 23... ...
Low SES is typically defined as a given percentage of the population with household incomes below the poverty level, the percentage of residents on public assistance, the unemployment rate of a neighborhood, or sometimes the percentage of single parents. Often definitions of low SES will use more than one of these descriptive measures.
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From page 24... ...
Leventhal's review suggests that some neighborhood effects are more important at certain ages, with some outcomes likely to be more strongly affected than others. Furthermore, although there is a strong body of knowledge on structural neighborhood factors affecting younger children and older adolescents, data on children in late childhood and early adolescence are lacking, and this poses a significant barrier to understanding how neighborhood effects influence child development.
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From page 25... ...
The MTO study included 4,600 families from five different cities (Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York) , all of whom lived in public housing developments in neighborhoods classified as high poverty (i.e., 40 percent or more of residents earned wages below the poverty level or were on public assistance)
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From page 26... ...
This suggests that, if housing programs seek to reduce the number of public assistance recipients living in high- and moderate-poverty neighborhoods, the programs will need to provide more support than just vouchers to facilitate a move to a low-poverty neighborhood. That the experimental group did successfully move to low-poverty neighborhoods meant that Leventhal and her colleagues could compare individual developmental outcomes for families living in a variety of neighborhoods.
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From page 27... ...
found that younger children ages 5 to 11 at random assignment in the experimental group were more likely to pass state-required reading exams than those in an in-place control group that remained in high-poverty neighborhoods. This complements Leventhal's results derived from Infant Health and Development Program data in that both studies suggest that neighborhood might affect educational outcomes.
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From page 28... ...
Leventhal discussed three possible mechanisms by which neighborhood effects could be explained namely, institutional resources, relationships, and norms and collective efficacy. A more lengthy discussion of these mechanisms is presented in Chapter 2 in the section on neighborhood effects research.
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From page 29... ...
Her review of data and research conducted during the 1 990s clearly suggested that neighborhoods do influence development, that the outcomes influenced vary depending on the particular resources of the community, and that there may be critical ages when neighborhood effects may be especially detrimental or nurturing to children's development. Her analysis of data from the Infant Health and Development Program and the MTO study provided preliminary empirical results that support previous findings that neighborhoods do matter to young people.
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From page 30... ...
Spatial barriers can present important challenges to these programs and, if not addressed, may reduce the effectiveness of the programs. Research on spatial mismatch can be used to identify instances in which geographic isolation may be a factor in the success or failure of a welfare-to-work program in a specific city, and this knowledge can be used to develop strategies that could reduce the impact of mismatch on welfare-to-work transitions.
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From page 31... ...
This process was used to facilitate an analysis of place-based barriers and neighborhood effects on participants. Coulton centered her analysis on four metropolitan inequalities: concentration and isolation of welfare recipients, neighborhood effects on work, barriers to job access for low-skilled and inner-city workers, and residential mobility and neighborhood change.
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From page 32... ...
Coulton explained that to the extent welfare dependency influences residents and neighborhoods through a threshold effect in this case the threshold was a 20 percent or more concentration of welfare recipients in a neighborhood fewer families in 1998 were exposed to this threshold. In other words, if neighborhood effects that perpetuate joblessness or other negative social traits are a significant influence only if a large number of residents are on welfare, the fact that fewer neighborhoods actually reached this 20 percent threshold suggests an overall improvement in the neighborhoods in which welfare recipients were living.
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From page 33... ...
This finding suggests that, even though welfare caseloads are declining, the people remaining on public assistance may be living in worse circumstances now than before welfare reform. It should be noted that this pattern was not seen in every city: Miami's remaining welfare tracts were less likely to also be disparate, suggesting that neighborhood conditions have improved for welfare recipients there.
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From page 34... ...
It is not uncommon for residents in "good" neighborhoods to resist the placement of subsidized housing in their communities, thus closing down one avenue for desegregating neighborhoods. Furthermore, a strategy of relocating welfare recipients to less disparate or less welfare-concentrated neighborhoods has a very important limit: it will never be feasible, nor perhaps desirable, to relocate entire neighborhoods of people in order to disperse a disparate census tract.
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From page 35... ...
On the other hand, frequent residential changesespecially if residents are not moving closer to tangible opportunities may make it more difficult for community networks to develop and for individuals to tap into neighborhood resources. Coulton found considerable residential mobility among participants in the Urban Change study, with 61 percent of Cleveland residents, 61 percent of Los Angeles residents, 39 percent of Miami residents, and 52 percent of Philadelphia residents having made at least one move to a new census tract between 1995 and 1998-1999.
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From page 36... ...
Neighborhood Effects on Welfare-to-Work Success Many scholars have speculated that neighborhood effects could be influential in successful transitions from welfare to work. Because data from the Project on Devolution and Urban Change study indicated that welfare recipients were concentrated in poor neighborhoods and that many ofthose neighborhoods displayed significant social and economic disparities, it was possible to test whether neighborhood exerted an independent (in this case negative)
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From page 37... ...
Studies such as the MTO experiment and naturally occurring quasi-experimental programs such as the Gautreaux Program have yielded varying results regarding the extent to which neighborhoods exert significant influences on residents. The Gautreaux Program began in Chicago in the 1 970s and through a lottery process moved some African American families on public assistance to public housing in white suburban neighborhoods.
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From page 38... ...
The second dataset was a database of entry-level job openings in the greater Cleveland metropolitan area used to estimate the number of entry-level positions available in various neighborhoods. In addition, a method was developed to estimate travel time by public transportation or car between various census tracts as a way to gauge the accessibility of high-growth job areas to the residential locations of welfare leavers.
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From page 39... ...
Furthermore, these individuals workocl in census tracts that had a higher proportion of African American resiclents. In contrast, white welfare leavers found employment in a pattern that mirrored the city-suburb ratio of available jobs.
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From page 40... ...
Research in these areas is promising, suggesting possible mechanisms by which neighborhoods might create barriers or opportunities for people transitioning from welfare to work, and yet a number of studies (e.g., MTO versus Gautreaux) have produced mixed results on the extent to which neighborhood is a significant influence on employment.
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From page 41... ...
The second paper focused on the underlying mechanisms by which neighborhood effects are translated into health outcomes. Homicide rates proved to be an important predictor of low birth weights, suggesting that regular exposure to the chronic stress of a violent neighborhood produces a "weathering effect" that results in negative health outcomes.
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From page 42... ...
To answer these questions, Morenoff examined rates of collective efficacy and social ties in neighborhoods, two mechanisms that have received the attention of scholars for the potential they are thought to have in creating an environment less conducive to crime. Essentially, if neighbors are willing to informally supervise and intervene in the activities occurring in neighborhood space, it may be more difficult for individuals bent on illicit activities to accomplish their goals.
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From page 43... ...
Morenoff's analysis also suggested that spatial dynamics may be an important factor in the rates of violent crime. Neighborhoods that were close to a community with high collective efficacy had lower homicide rates than those that were not.
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From page 44... ...
, 517-560. neighborhood homicide rates, collective efficacy and spatial dependence exert powerful independent effects on violent crime.
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From page 45... ...
Neighborhood effects included structural features of the environment such as SES and racial segregation, institutional resources such as health care and social services, and ecological sources of stress such as crime and violence. Morenoff's presentation focused on the effects of ecological sources of stress (e.g., homicide as a marker of exposure to violent crime)
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From page 46... ...
One explanation of how environmental stress can influence individuals is captured in the notion of a "weathering effect." This term represents the impact that stress can have over time, suggesting that prolonged exposure to chronic ecological stress such as violent crime may have a cumulative effect on individuals that can lead to poor health outcomes. In other words, the longer individuals are exposed to environmental stressors, the more likely it is that this allostatic load will translate into low-birthweight babies, asthma attacks, heart disease, and other health problems.
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From page 47... ...
In lowcrime neighborhoods there is relatively little relationship between maternal age and birth weights. However, in high-crime neighborhoods, African Americans appear to experience a weathering effect, whereby as the age of
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From page 48... ...
For example, from 1989 to 1996 non-Hispanic whites had the highest average birth weights, with Hispanics of Mexican descent having only slightly lower averages. African Americans had the lowest birth weights, and these were substantially lower than those for non-Hispanic whites and Hispanics (see Figure 3-41.
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From page 49... ...
Therefore, the scale of reciprocal exchange that focused on neighbors may have masked the importance of familial social support in mediating birth weights for African Americans. Another interesting result of this part of the study was the relationship between neighborhood composition and birth weights.
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From page 50... ...
For example, with regard to reducing juvenile crime, instruments of collective efficacy might measure the extent to which neighbors would intervene if they observed young people engaged in vandalism or other illicit activities. In contrast, in determining whether collective efficacy is important to birth weights, social ties and reciprocity among neighbors (such as doing favors and caring for one another)
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From page 51... ...
Finally, while a developmental or people-based approach to neighborhood effects may be important in understanding how negative effects become attached to individuals, solving some ofthe situational-based causes ofthese effects may require an event-based analysis. CHAPTER SUMMARY The workshop discussions summarized in this chapter reflect the growing knowledge of neighborhood effects and advances in conducting research to identify key mechanisms responsible for translating neighborhood conditions to individual outcomes.
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