Equality of Opportunity and the Importance of Place Summary of a Workshop (2002) / Chapter Skim
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2. Why Place Matters
2. Why Place Matters
Pages 7-21
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From page 7... ...
It begins with a brief discussion characterizing the current state of many inner-city neighborhoods and reviews briefly several important social, demographic, and economic trends that have yielded the spatial disparities that characterize inner-city conditions in the United States today. After discussion of the trends that have resulted in disparities in well-being among neighborhoods, the chapter describes two frameworks of analysis spatial mismatch and neighborhood effects that structure much of the current research on inner cities.
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From page 8... ...
Spatial mismatch does, however, have its own particular research trajectory separate from, if still connected to, neighborhood effects, and because of this it is presented separately in this chapter. CREATING TODAY'S INNER-CITY NEIGHBORHOODS Characterizing Concentrated Poverty: A Short Description Inner-city neighborhoods are very different places today than they were 60 years ago or even 30 years ago.
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From page 9... ...
This compares to 1.2 million African Americans living in high-poverty neighborhoods in 1970 and 2.1 million residing in such neighborhoods by 1990. Concentrated poverty in inner-city neighborhoods is often accompanied by a number of factors that contribute to a lower quality of life in these areas: high rates of property and violent crimes, unemployment, and cash assistance receipt.
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From page 10... ...
points to ways in which racial segregation and discrimination in housing contribute to concentrated poverty in African American neighborhoods. Citing recent empirical work, Massey argues that, although whites and African Americans currently share an ideological commitment to integrated housing, this ideology does not translate into actions that would accomplish actual integration.
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From page 11... ...
Mediocre and low-quality public schools, substandard community resources in terms of after-school educational opportunities, few good role models to demonstrate the positive outcomes of education, and limited social networks to help guide young people through the transitions of college, graduate or professional school, and job placement put families in high-poverty neighborhoods at a significant disadvantage (Holzer, 2001; Wilson, 19961. TWO FRAMEWORKS IN RECENT RESEARCH: SPATIAL MISMATCH AND NEIGHBORHOOD EFFECTS While the previous discussion highlights trends that have led to current inner-city conditions, identifying specific place-based factors that offer opportunities for public policy or intervention programs to create more equitable conditions in neighborhoods requires a slightly different analysis.
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From page 12... ...
, it is imperative that policy analysts determine the extent to which mismatch is a problem for a particular city before recommending public expenditures to correct any geographic isolation of low-skilled, inner-city workers. Another feature of spatial mismatch is that women appear to be particularly vulnerable to geographic mismatches, probably because of more fit is worth noting that some researchers have found that spatial mismatch is beginning to affect less-educated, low-skilled, white inner-city workers as well as minorities.
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From page 13... ...
Because of this, policy makers whose focus is to create effective welfare policy could improve the chances that programs will succeed if they take into consideration the extent to which spatial mismatch represents an important problem in their particular cities. Although a number of empirical studies have sought to evaluate the presence of spatial mismatch in a city, fewer studies have sought to determine its underlying causes.
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From page 14... ...
From Spatial to the Intangible: Neighborhood Effects In addition to the challenges that physical distance can create in terms of workers reaching new jobs and information networks, space is important in that the nature of the place in which people live may have important effects on residents. This line of inquiry essentially seeks to answer the question of in what ways a neighborhood can itself actually influence individual outcomes.
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From page 15... ...
Selection bias may confound research on neighborhood effects in that more highly motivated individuals find ways to leave negative environments. Measured neighborhood effects may therefore capture unmeasured characteristics of those who remain.
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From page 16... ...
The mechanism of competition suggests that neighborhoods in which individuals compete for limited resources can create difficult and negative relationships within a peer group that can yield negative outcomes. Finally, the relative deprivation mechanism suggests that "neighborhood conditions affect individuals by means of their evaluation of their own situation relative to neighbors or peers" (Leventhal and Brooks-Gunn, 2000, p.
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From page 17... ...
One strength is that Leventhal and Brooks-Gunn stress that each of their pathways can be considered in light of how neighborhoods might affect residents across the life span rather than focusing exclusively on the effects of neighborhood on child and adolescent development. That Leventhal and Brooks-Gunn offer a conceptualization of how neighborhood characteristics could affect adults as well as young people is somewhat different from Jencks and Mayer's approach, which focuses primarily on neighborhood effects on young people.
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From page 18... ...
One difference is that Ellen and Turner emphasize the quality not just the availability of resources, pointing out that poor residents may be particularly vulnerable to the influences of their local services because few may have the means to find other services elsewhere if neighborhood ones are of low quality or entirely absent. For example, low-quality preschools, with less skilled staff, fewer volunteers to work with students, and limited educational resources, may fail to properly prepare young children for kindergarten a situation known to predispose disadvantaged students to lower academic outcomes later.
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From page 19... ...
Social networks can also provide other types of support, such as neighbors who can help with child care, that can enable working families to more easily maintain steady employment. Social networks may be neighborhood based or may extend beyond one's immediate community.
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From page 20... ...
This example sheds light on why it can be so challenging to identify the influential factors underlying neighborhood effects because many such effects interact with qualities inherent to individuals in complicated ways. Developing effective policy and programmatic responses is made more challenging by the complexity of neighborhood effects.
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From page 21... ...
Research on spatial mismatch and neighborhood effects reflects these barriers and identifies factors and mechanisms that policy and intervention programs could seek to influence. The next chapter explores some of the most recent research on spatial mismatch and neighborhood effects, particularly as they relate to several present-day policy challenges namely, transitions from welfare to work, child and adolescent development, and the status of public health.
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