Chapter prepared for 2010 Russell Sage volume on Social Inequality and Educational (original) (raw)

Estimating Neighborhood Effects on Low-Income Youth

2003

Youth outcomes vary dramatically across neighborhoods. For example in Wilmette, Illinois, a North-shore Chicago suburb with a median home value of $441,000, almost everyone graduates from high school and a majority go on to attend���and complete���college. 1 In contrast, the dropout rate exceeds 20% in more than one-quarter of Chicago's public high schools, most of which can be found in the city's disadvantaged South-and West-side neighborhoods, while six high schools have dropout rates over 30%.

Unpacking Neighborhood Influences on Education Outcomes: Setting the Stage for Future Research

2010

participants at the Social Inequality and Educational Disadvantage conferences and the University of Michigan Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Seminar for helpful comments on previous versions of this paper. The views expressed here are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as those of the Congressional Budget Office social, economic, and cultural processes that create associations between the compositional or demographic characteristics of neighborhoods, such as neighborhood poverty, and individual educational outcomes, such as achievement scores or educational attainment.

Neighborhood Poverty and Adolescent Development

Journal of Research on Adolescence, 2011

This article provides a comprehensive review of studies conducted over the past decade on the effects of neighborhood and poverty on adolescent normative and nonnormative development. Our review includes a summary of studies examining the associations between neighborhood poverty and adolescent identity development followed by a review of studies addressing both direct and indirect linking among neighborhood poverty to academic achievement as well as internalizing and externalizing behaviors. Available neighborhood studies that examined physical health disparities, as well as genetic and environmental influences on adolescent development, were also included. Within each section we summarize findings that address the direct and indirect effects of neighborhood poverty. We conclude with promising strategies for future research, including recommendations for addressing theoretical and methodological issues that continue to plague this field of research.

Neighborhoods, families, and children: Implications for policy and practice

Journal of Community Psychology, 1999

s Recent global and national trends have put a growing number of families and children living in the United States at risk for adverse health and developmental outcomes. Policies and programs designed to address these problems have too often focused on the characteristics of individuals as the root cause and have failed to address significantly core problems. The research reported here suggests that researchers, program planners, and policy makers should go beyond the focus on individuals to incorporate and target larger structural issues such as increasing poverty, growing economic inequalities between rich and poor, and eroding public social programs. This research demonstrates the importance of larger social structures for individuals' health. It also has implications for policy, namely: Neighborhoods are an important target for intervention; policy makers must take a multi-issue approach to addressing problems of the inner city; programs should look at building on community resources and infrastructure, as well as address the needs of individual community residents; and a "one-size-fits-all" mentality is not appropriate when designing programs to serve neighborhoods.

The Effect of Neighborhood Characteristics on Young Adult Outcomes: Alternative Estimates

Social Science Quarterly

We estimate a set of alternative models to examine the effect of neighborhood characteristics on outcomes among young adult women. The models are motivated by a concern that standard estimates of neighborhood effects may in part reflect the characteristics of families that reside in those neighborhoods. In addition to a "standard" model that includes controls for family background, we estimate fixed-effect models that also control for unobservable family characteristics that may affect young adult outcomes. To do this, we use a sample of sisters drawn from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. In models that control for family background, we find evidence of neighborhood effects consistent with other recent work. In the fixed-effect models, however, there are no statistically significant effects that are consistent with standard hypotheses about neighborhood effects. The findings from this exploratory study suggest that one should be cautious about accepting findings of significant neighborhood effects derived from models that do not account for the possible selection of neighborhood.

Neighborhood Attributes as Determinants of Children's Outcomes: How Robust Are the Relationships?

Journal of Human Resources, 2000

Estimates of neighborhood effects on children's outcomes vary widely among the studies that seek to identify their existence and magnitude, reflecting substantial variation in data and model specification. Here, we review that literature, and ask if the disparity in estimates of neighborhood effects may reflect the differences among studies in the specification of family characteristics, and hence omitted variables bias. We report a systematic set of robustness results for three youth outcomes (high school graduation, the number of years of completed schooling, and teen nonmarital childbearing) using data on about 2,600 children from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. We observe these children over a period of at least 21 years and have included an extensive set of neighborhood variables for these individuals measured over the entire school-age period. We measure the relationship of these neighborhood variables to the three outcomes, moving from basic models containing no individual and family characteristic variables to models containing an extensive set of individual and family statistical controls. We conclude that the reliability of estimates of these impacts may be an artifact of the degree to which family background is characterized in model specification. Confidence that reported neighborhood effects reveal true relationships requires statistical controls for the full range of family and individual background that may also influence children's attainments; not all variables with coefficients showing asterisks have significant effects.

Family and neighborhood income: additive and multiplicative associations with youths’ well-being

Social Science Research, 2003

The present study extends prior research on additive and multiplicative ways by which family and neighborhood income relate to youthsÕ well-being. Integrating substantive and methodological concepts, we demonstrate how various hypotheses would be revealed empirically with continuous income measures and clarify the relationship among different conceptual models. Substantively, we highlight ways in which match and mismatch between family and neighborhood income may encourage positive or negative social comparisons and may influence youthsÕ ability to participate in social networks and to access enriching resources. We illustrate these models using a sample of 877 primarily white boys and girls representatively drawn from three US communities. We find that youthsÕ receptive vocabulary is more strongly positively related to income in one context (family or neighborhood) when income is low in the other context (neighborhood or family), particularly for white children. Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and impairment of daily functioning are highest among youth who live in contexts where their familiesÕ financial circumstances are advantaged or deprived in relation to their neighbors.

The Role of Exposure to Neighborhood and School Poverty in Understanding Educational Attainment

Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 2021

Because the demographic composition of neighborhoods and schools overlaps, their effects on educational attainment are not independent of each other. Throughout the early teenage years, the timing and duration of exposure to neighborhood and school contexts can vary, advocating for a longitudinal approach when studying schooling outcomes. This study uses Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children data (N = 4502; 49% female) to examine how exposure to poverty between ages 10-16 predicts educational attainment. The results indicate that enduring exposure to neighborhood poverty relates to educational attainment, while timing does not. For school poverty, longer exposure is related to lower attainment, but earlier exposure has a stronger impact than later exposure. Adolescents who were exposed to poverty in both contexts for the full observation period had the lowest educational attainment. The findings highlight the importance of understanding when and how long adolescents are exposed to contextual poverty.

Neighborhood Disadvantage: Pathways of Effects for Young Children

Child Development, 2008

The present study used Canadian National Longitudinal data to examine a model of the mechanisms through which the effects of neighborhood socioeconomic conditions impact young children's verbal and behavioral outcomes (N 5 3,528; M age 5 5.05 years, SD 5 0.86). Integrating elements of social disorganization theory and family stress models, and results from structural equation models suggest that both neighborhood and family mechanisms played an important role in the transmission of neighborhood socioeconomic effects. Neighborhood disadvantage manifested its effect via lower neighborhood cohesion, which was associated with maternal depression and family dysfunction. These processes were, in turn, related to less consistent, less stimulating, and more punitive parenting behaviors, and ultimately, poorer child outcomes.