Neighborhood Change Project

Outcomes

The Measurement Problem

One fascinating aspect of neighborhood change programs is the ultimate goal is not always clear.

It’s relatively easy to define distressed communities. They tend to be characterized by:

We need to be careful because not all “poor” communities are distressed communities. Chinatown in New York city has a high poverty rate because of the large proportion of first-generation immigrants that crowd into small apartments and work in some of the many low-paying industries active in the community. But it has dense social capital, affordable housing, opportunities for employment, and high rates of social mobility for children that grow up in the community. It is poor because it is a launching pad for poor immigrants, not because it is a poverty trap.

All distressed communities are poor communities, but not all poor communities are distressed.

Community revitalization programs target distressed neighborhoods in an attempt to catalyze economic development. But what does this mean?

The Measurement Problem in neighborhood change studies

Measuring Neighborhood Health

It’s important to start with a strong mental model of how communities change during revitalization efforts, and establish your own criteria for what successful revitalization looks like. Is it just about place? Just about people? Or some mix of the two?

The main challenge with many place-based efforts is that the easiest way to achieve success if you are not careful about what you are measuring is to move all of the poor people out of the neighborhood and move middle-class families into the neighborhood. Education test scores immediately rise. Unemployment rates drop. Income increases. But note that all of this impact can be achieved without actually raising anyone’s income, improving schools, or reducing unemployment if we are just shifting wealthy people to distressed neighborhoods and moving poor people out.

On the other hand, it is not realistic to assume no population movement in and out of a neighborhood. Even if a distressed community is not undergoing gentrification you still see a large proportion of poor people pushed out because they are evicted from apartments, moving closer to employment opportunities, or leave for other reasons. Churn is a natural part of neighborhood dynamics, and it is higher among the poor regardless of the neighborhood they live in.

For this lab, skim the following article and blog:

  1. Freeman, L. (2005). Displacement or succession? Residential mobility in gentrifying neighborhoods. Urban Affairs Review, 40(4), 463-491. [PDF]
  2. Macaig (2015): Gentrification in America Report [PDF]

Consider two neighborhoods. Both are distressed in 2000. Both experience significant rises in income and increases in high school graduation rates.

One is experiencing healthy revitalization for residents, and one is experiencing rapid gentrification. How can we tell these two cases apart?

Studies that Operationalize Neighborhood Health

Manduca, R., & Sampson, R. J. (2019). Punishing and toxic neighborhood environments independently predict the intergenerational social mobility of black and white children. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(16), 7772-7777. [PDF]

We use data on intergenerational social mobility by neighborhood to examine how social and physical environments beyond concentrated poverty predict children’s long-term well-being. First, we examine neighborhoods that are harsh on children’s development: those characterized by high levels of violence, incarceration, and lead exposure….Our explanatory variables are constructed from the Community Survey of the PHDCN, which interviewed a representative sample of Chicago residents about their neighborhood social environments in 1995 and 2002 (combined N of ∼12,000); violent crime rates per 100,000 population from 1995 to 2000, derived from offenses reported by citizens to the police; incarceration rates per population from 1995 to 2000, derived from prison admission data; and lead exposure among children from 1995 to 1997, derived from more than 150,000 blood-level tests conducted by Chicago’s health department.

Economic Innovation Group. (2016). The 2016 distressed communities index: An analysis of community well-being across the United States. [PDF] [WEBSITE]

Excerpt from NPR: “A Look At The Wealth And Income Gap, By ZIP Code”:

“The United States is still a land of opportunity for many. But when it comes to life outcomes, geography is too often destiny,” says a report from the Economic Innovation Group, a research organization. Despite the economic recovery, the report says, life for those in the most distressed ZIP codes looks “much more like an ongoing downturn. Large swaths of the country are indeed being left behind by economic growth and change.” The report calculates what it calls a “distressed community index” using seven metrics: housing vacancy rates, the number of adults working, the poverty rate, median income, the number of people with high school degrees, the change in employment and the rate of business formation.

METHODOLOGY

Ellen, I. G., & Turner, M. A. (1997). Does neighborhood matter? Assessing recent evidence. Housing Policy Debate, 8(4), 833-866. [PDF]

This article synthesizes findings from a wide range of empirical research into how neighborhoods affect families and children. It lays out a conceptual framework for understanding how neighborhoods may affect people at different life stages. It then identifies methodological challenges, summarizes past research findings, and suggests priorities for future work.

Despite a growing body of evidence that neighborhood conditions play a role in shaping individual outcomes, serious methodological challenges remain that suggest some caution in interpreting this evidence. Moreover, no consensus emerges about which neighborhood characteristics affect which outcomes, or about what types of families may be most influenced by neighborhood conditions. Finally, existing studies provide little empirical evidence about the causal mechanisms through which neighborhood environment influences individual outcomes. To be useful to policy makers, future empirical research should tackle the critical question of how and for whom neighborhood matters.