http://cdp.sagepub.com/Science

Current Directions in Psychological

http://cdp.sagepub.com/content/12/1/27The online version of this article can be found at:

 DOI: 10.1111/1467-8721.01216

2003 12: 27Current Directions in Psychological ScienceTama Leventhal and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn

Children and Youth in Neighborhood Contexts  

Published by:

http://www.sagepublications.com

On behalf of: 

  Association for Psychological Science

can be found at:Current Directions in Psychological ScienceAdditional services and information for    

  http://cdp.sagepub.com/cgi/alertsEmail Alerts:

 

http://cdp.sagepub.com/subscriptionsSubscriptions:  

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navReprints:  

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navPermissions:  

What is This? 

- Feb 1, 2003Version of Record >>

at UNIV TORONTO on August 11, 2014cdp.sagepub.comDownloaded from at UNIV TORONTO on August 11, 2014cdp.sagepub.comDownloaded from

Copyright © 2003 American Psychological Society

CURRENT DIRECTIONS IN PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE 27

Children and Youth in Neighborhood Contexts

Tama Leventhal

1

and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn

National Center for Children and Families, Teachers College,

Columbia University, New York, New York

Abstract

Neighborhoods are increas-ingly studied as a context wherechildren and youth develop;however, the extent of neighbor-hoods’ impact remains debat-able because it is difficult todisentangle this impact fromthat of the family context, in partbecause families have somechoice as to where they live. Evi-dence from randomized experi-ments, studies using advancedstatistical models, and longitudi-nal studies that control for fam-ily characteristics indicates thatneighborhoods do matter. Innonexperimental studies, small

to moderate associations werefound, suggesting that childrenand adolescents living in high-income neighborhoods hadhigher cognitive ability andschool achievement than thoseliving in middle-income neigh-borhoods, and children and ado-lescents living in low-incomeneighborhoods had more men-tal and physical health problemsthan those living in middle-in-come neighborhoods. The homeenvironment has been shown tobe partly responsible for the linkbetween neighborhood and chil-dren’s development. For ado-lescents, neighborhood effects

are partially accounted for bycommunity social control. Ex-perimental studies in whichfamilies were randomly as-signed to move to low-povertyneighborhoods from housingprojects found larger neighbor-hood effects than nonexperi-mental research, particularly forboys’ outcomes. Additional issuesreviewed are relevant neighbor-hood characteristics, theoreticalmodels explaining the pathwaysunderlying neighborhood ef-fects, methods for research as-sessing neighborhood processes,and policy implications.

Keywords

neighborhood; community;achievement; health; income/socioeconomic status; policy

Historical trends document thedeclining economic conditions inwhich children grow up. Com-

at UNIV TORONTO on August 11, 2014cdp.sagepub.comDownloaded from

28 VOLUME 12, NUMBER 1, FEBRUARY 2003

Published by Blackwell Publishing Inc.

pared with their predecessors, chil-dren today are more likely to beraised in poor families (i.e., thosewhose incomes fall below a feder-ally established threshold), as wellas to live in poor neighborhoods(i.e., 20% or more of residentspoor). Almost half of poor familiesreside in urban neighborhoods thatare increasingly marked by con-centrated poverty. Both family andneighborhood poverty are rootedin demographic shifts in familycomposition and labor-force partic-ipation, changes in migration andresidential patterns, declines in in-dustrialization, and housing segre-gation (Massey & Denton, 1993;Wilson, 1987). Responding to thesetrends, both academic scholarsand policymakers developed a ris-ing interest in the contexts in whichchildren are reared, includinglarger social environments beyondthe family, notably neighborhoods.By the mid-1980s, questions suchas the following were raised: Doesneighborhood residence influencechildren’s well-being? How doneighborhoods affect children andyouth? What can be done to allevi-ate neighborhood disadvantageand its potentially harmful effectson children’s development? In re-sponse to these questions, scholarsfrom various disciplines—econom-ics, epidemiology, demography,sociology, and psychology—launched a field of study that hasbecome known as neighborhoodresearch (Brooks-Gunn, Duncan,& Aber, 1997).

NONEXPERIMENTAL STUDIES OF NEIGHBORHOOD

EFFECTS ON DEVELOPMENT

Most neighborhood research hasused census-based measures ofneighborhood structural or socio-demographic characteristics inconjunction with data collected onchildren and families, often from

large national data sets (e.g., PanelStudy of Income Dynamics, Na-tional Longitudinal Survey ofYouth-Child Supplement), to ex-amine associations among neigh-borhood residence and child andadolescent outcomes. Data fromthe U.S. Census come from theforms the population fills out onApril 1 of the 1st year of every de-cade. Thus, census information islimited to structural characteristics,such as median household income,percentage of residents with a highschool diploma, racial composition,and percentage of homeowners. Thecensus tract is the most frequentlyused definition of “neighborhood”in these studies. Tract boundariesare identified by local communitiesworking under Census Bureauguidelines and reflect salient phys-ical and social features that demar-cate neighborhoods, such as majorstreets, railroads, and ethnic divi-sions; census tracts contain approx-imately 3,000 to 8,000 individuals.

Neighborhood income or socioeco-nomic status (SES)—a combination ofsocial and economic indicators—isthe most commonly investigatedneighborhood characteristic. Inthese studies, researchers often usetwo separate measures of SES, be-cause the presence of poor and afflu-ent neighbors may have differentialassociations with child and adoles-cent outcomes (Jencks & Mayer,1990). High-SES/affluence measuresmay take into consideration indica-tors such as income, percentage pro-fessionals, and percentage of resi-dents who are college educated;low-SES/poverty measures maytake into consideration indicatorssuch as percentage poor, percentageof households headed by females,percentage on public assistance,and percentage unemployed.Other structural characteristics fre-quently examined include racial-ethnic mix (e.g., percentage Black,percentage Latino, and percentageforeign-born) and residential insta-bility (e.g., percentage moved in last

5 years, percentage of households intheir current home less than 10 years,and percentage renters).

Studies investigating neighbor-hood effects on children’s devel-opment also account for familycharacteristics, such as income,composition, and parents’ educa-tion, age, and race or ethnicity, todemonstrate whether neighbor-hood effects go “above and be-yond” family influences. Becausefamilies have some choice as towhere they live, adjusting forthese background factors alsominimizes the possibility that un-measured individual and familycharacteristics associated withneighborhood residence (i.e., se-lection bias) might account for ob-served neighborhood effects .Some researchers also have ad-dressed selection problems by us-ing various advanced analyticstrategies, such as comparisons ofsiblings or first cousins, whichhold family characteristics con-stant; instrumental variable analy-ses, which minimize unmeasuredcorrelations between neighbor-hood characteristics and child out-comes; and behavior geneticsmodels, which differentiate be-tween genetic and environmentalinfluences.

We recently conducted a large-scale review of the neighborhoodresearch (Leventhal & Brooks-Gunn, 2000). Findings reported inthat review as well as subsequentwork revealed consistent patternsof neighborhood effects on chil-dren’s and adolescents’ develop-ment; comparable findings have beendocumented in U.S. and Canadiansamples and in cross-sectional andlongitudinal studies that controlfor family characteristics. Acrossthese studies, neighborhood effectswere small to moderate in size. Forpreschool and school-age children,the presence of affluent or high-income neighbors was positivelyassociated with children’s verbalabil i ty, IQ scores, and school

at UNIV TORONTO on August 11, 2014cdp.sagepub.comDownloaded from

Copyright © 2003 American Psychological Society

CURRENT DIRECTIONS IN PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE 29

achievement. In contrast, the pres-ence of low-income or low-SESneighbors was associated withchildren’s mental health prob-lems. For adolescents, living in ahigh-income neighborhood wasalso associated with high schoolachievement and educational at-tainment, particularly for males.Residence in low-income neigh-borhoods was associated with ad-verse mental health, criminal anddelinquent behavior, and unfavor-able sexual and fertility outcomesfor adolescents. For both childrenand adolescents, these patterns ofresults also have been found instudies employing advanced sta-tistical techniques, although effectsizes are typically reduced.

EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES OF NEIGHBORHOOD EFFECTS

ON DEVELOPMENT

Although nonexperimental neigh-borhood research has yielded fairlyconsistent patterns of findings, it hasbeen criticized on the grounds thatfamilies have some choice as to theneighborhoods in which they live,resulting in selection bias (even af-ter accounting for family character-istics). Experimental and quasi-experimental studies that randomlyassign families to live in certaintypes of neighborhoods overcomethe selection problem in nonexperi-mental research. Although such de-signs may seem implausible, theyhave been possible in the context ofhousing programs that randomlyselect families for assistance in re-locating from public housing to lesspoor neighborhoods (e.g., they mayreceive vouchers to rent housing inthe private market or be offered pub-lic housing built in nonpoor neigh-borhoods).

The oldest and most well knownquasi-experimental study is theGautreaux Program, enacted fol-lowing a court order to desegregate

Chicago’s public housing. Familieswere given vouchers to move, andassignment of families to neighbor-hoods was random, based on hous-ing availability (see Rubinowitz &Rosenbaum, 2000, for a review). A10-year follow-up found that youthwho moved to more affluent sub-urban neighborhoods fared betteracademically than youth who movedto poor urban neighborhoods.

In 1994, partially in response topositive findings reported in theGautreaux Program, the U.S. De-partment of Housing and UrbanDevelopment initiated the Movingto Opportunity Program in five cit-ies across the country. Approxi-mately 4,600 families were ran-domly assigned vouchers to moveout of public housing in high-pov-erty neighborhoods into privatehousing of their choice or into pri-vate housing in low-poverty neigh-borhoods (with special assistance);a subset of families remained inpublic housing. Although initialevaluations were conducted inde-pendently in each city, there issome overlap in the outcomes ex-amined in different cities, so that itis possible to draw some prelimi-nary conclusions from this research(Goering, in press). Findings fromthese experimental studies re-vealed that several years into theprogram, children and youth whomoved to less poor neighborhoodshad higher educational achieve-ment and superior physical andmental health compared with theirpeers who remained in high-pov-erty neighborhoods (Katz, Kling, &Liebman, 2001 ; Leventha l &Brooks-Gunn, 2002, in press). Inaddition, arrests for violent crimewere lower among male youthwho moved to less poor neighbor-hoods than among peers whostayed in high-poverty neighbor-hoods (Ludwig, Duncan, & Hirsch-field, 2001). Neighborhood effectsin these experimental studies werelarge. In addition, larger effects weregenerally seen for children and

youth who moved to low-povertyneighborhoods than for those whomoved to moderately poor neigh-borhoods, and effects were morepronounced for boys than girls.

THEORETICAL MODELS OF NEIGHBORHOOD EFFECTS

The experimental and nonexper-imental studies we have reviewedilluminated specific neighborhoodcharacteristics that were associ-ated with particular outcomes.These studies, however, do not ad-dress the mechanisms throughwhich neighborhood effects occur.We have proposed several theoreti-cal models to explain potentialpathways of neighborhood influ-ences (Leventhal & Brooks-Gunn,2000). These models highlight dif-ferent underlying processes oper-ating at various levels (individual,family, school, peer, and commu-nity). This work draws heavily froma review and analysis by Jencks andMayer (1990); from research on fam-ily stress, economic hardship, andunemployment; and from literatureon community social organizationand urban sociology.

The first model,

institutional re-sources

, posits that neighborhoodinfluences operate by means of thequality, quantity, and diversity oflearning, recreational, social, edu-cational, health, and employmentresources in the community. Thesecond model,

relationships and ties

,highlights families as a potentialmechanism of neighborhood effects.Important variables in this modelinclude parental attributes (e.g.,mental and physical health, copingskills, and efficacy), social net-works, and behavior (e.g., supervi-sion-monitoring, warmth, andharshness), as well as characteris-tics of the home environment (e.g.,learning and physical environ-ments, family routines, and vio-lence). The last model,

norms and

at UNIV TORONTO on August 11, 2014cdp.sagepub.comDownloaded from

30 VOLUME 12, NUMBER 1, FEBRUARY 2003

Published by Blackwell Publishing Inc.

collective efficacy

, hypothesizes thatneighborhood influences are ac-counted for by the extent of formaland informal social institutions inthe community and the degree towhich they monitor or control resi-dents’ behavior in accordance withsocially accepted practices and thegoal of maintaining public order(Sampson, Raudenbush, & Earls,1997). This model includes influencessuch as peer groups and physicalthreats in the neighborhood (e.g.,violence, availability of illegal andharmful substances). The modelsare intended to be complementaryrather than conflicting, with theutility of each model for explainingneighborhood effects on children’swell-being depending on both theparticular outcome studied and theage group examined.

An emerging body of research,focused largely on adolescentproblem behavior, substantiatesthe norms-and-collective-efficacymodel. At both the community andthe individual levels, mechanismsof social control have been foundto account, in part, for associationsamong neighborhood structureand rates of problem behavioramong adolescents (e.g., Elliott etal., 1996; Sampson et al., 1997).There has been scant research rele-vant to the other models, althoughseveral studies of young childrensupport the relationships-and-tiesmodel; quality of the home envi-ronment was found to partially ac-count for associations betweenneighborhood structure and chil-dren’s achievement and behavioraloutcomes (Klebanov, Brooks-Gunn,McCarton, & McCormick, 1998).

CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS

Evidence from randomized exper-iments, studies employing advancedstatistical models, and longitudinalstudies controlling for family char-

acteristics indicates that neighbor-hoods, and particularly their socio-economic composition, do matter.The size of neighborhood effectsreported in the nonexperimentalliterature has typically been smallto modest (after background charac-teristics are accounted for). How-ever, neighborhood effects reportedin the limited set of experimentalstudies were large, likely becausethe changes in neighborhood con-ditions were substantial (whenfamilies initiate their own moves,the changes are usually not solarge, particularly among low-in-come families) . To determinewhether nonexperimental researchis underestimating neighborhoodeffects, it will be necessary to try toreplicate the experimental findingsby undertaking natural studieswhere radical changes in neighbor-hood economic conditions have oc-curred. In addition, suggestive evi-dence from nonexper imenta lstudies reveals that neighborhoodresidence may be differentially as-sociated with outcomes for Lati-nos compared with European andAfrican Americans, pointing to ac-culturation as a potentially impor-tant and unexplored variable mod-erating the effects of neighborhoodstructure.

The impact of neighborhood res-idence is also likely to vary acrossdevelopment; however, becausemuch of the neighborhood researchis cross-sectional or based on neigh-borhood residence at a single pointin time, this issue has not been ade-quately addressed. This relativelystatic view of neighborhood influ-ences extends to neighborhoodconditions. Researchers often ig-nore the fact that families moveacross neighborhoods and thateven when families do not move,neighborhood structure changes,for example, through gentrificationand immigration (Leventhal &Brooks-Gunn, 2001).

What else remains unclear ishow neighborhoods matter. Our

proposed models—institutional re-sources, relationships and ties, andnorms and collective efficacy—provide a framework intended toaid empirical investigations of the-oretically driven neighborhood re-search. To test theoretical models,it is necessary to move beyond cen-sus measures of SES and directlyassess underlying processes. Alter-native data sources are required tomeasure neighborhood-level pro-cesses, in particular. Useful datawill come from (a) city, state, andfederal records (e.g., vital statisticsfrom health departments, crime re-ports from police departments,school records from education de-partments, and child abuse and ne-glect records from social servicedepartments); (b) systematic socialobservations by trained observersusing a structured format to char-acterize neighborhoods along arange of social and physical at-tributes; (c) community surveys inwhich non-study participants (i.e.,an independent sample) are inter-viewed about their neighborhoods(usually about their neighborhoods’social organization); and (d) neigh-borhood-expert surveys in whichkey community leaders are inter-viewed about neighborhood po-litical and social organization (seeLeventhal & Brooks-Gunn, 2001,for additional details). Recent stud-ies designed specifically withneighborhood influences in mindare collecting longitudinal and pro-cess-oriented data on children,families, and neighborhoods and arewell suited for exploring mecha-nisms through which neighbor-hoods influence child well-being, aswell as addressing dynamic modelsof neighborhood influences.

Several policy implications maybe drawn from the existing neigh-borhood research. The researchsuggests that it would be beneficialto develop programs that fostermoving poor families out of poorneighborhoods. In line with thisgoal are efforts to reduce housing

at UNIV TORONTO on August 11, 2014cdp.sagepub.comDownloaded from

Copyright © 2003 American Psychological Society

CURRENT DIRECTIONS IN PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE 31

discrimination in nonpoor neigh-borhoods. What Moving to Oppor-tunity and other such programshave demonstrated is that withoutspecial assistance, poor familieswho are given vouchers do notnecessari ly move out of poorneighborhoods. A complementaryapproach is to build scattered-sitepublic housing in nonpoor neigh-borhoods, as was done in Yonkers,New York. However, if the mostadvantaged poor families moveout of poor neighborhoods, whatremains are concentrations of poorfamilies, and possibly of those withthe most mental and physicalhealth problems, poor copingskills, and low literacy—all barriersto economic self-sufficiency.

An alternative strategy is tomove nonpoor families into poorneighborhoods to change the mixand reduce poverty concentrationand segregation. Gentrification alsotypically entails providing services(e.g., good-quality schools) and jobsin these neighborhoods. It is still un-clear if poor families (or which poorfamilies) benefit from this transfor-mation or if they are forced out.

In summary, future researchwill likely lead to better answers tothe original questions posed by ac-ademic scholars and policymakers,as well as to the design of more ef-fective policies.

Recommended Reading

Brooks-Gunn, J., Duncan, G.J., &Aber, J.L. (Eds.). (1997). (See Ref-erences)

Burton, L.M., & Jarrett, R.L. (2000). Inthe mix, yet on the margins: Theplace of families in urban neigh-borhood and child developmentresearch. Journal of Marriage andthe Family, 62, 1114–1135.

Goering, J. (Ed.). (in press). (See Ref-erences)

Leventhal, T., & Brooks-Gunn, J. (2000).(See References)

Sampson, R.J., Raudenbush, S.W., &Earls, F. (1997). (See References)

Note

1. Address correspondence to TamaLeventhal, National Center for Chil-dren and Families, Teachers College,Columbia University, New York, NY10027; e-mail: tl91@columbia.edu.

References

Brooks-Gunn, J., Duncan, G.J., & Aber, J.L. (Eds.).(1997).

Neighborhood poverty

(2 vols.). NewYork: Russell Sage Foundation Press.

Elliott, D., Wilson, W.J., Huizinga, D., Sampson,R., Elliott, A., & Rankin, B. (1996). The effectsof neighborhood disadvantage on adolescentdevelopment.

Journal of Research in Crime andDelinquency, 33

, 389–426.Goering, J. (Ed.). (in press).

Choosing a better life?How public housing tenants selected a HUD exper-iment to improve their lives and those of their chil-dren: The Moving to Opportunity DemonstrationProgram.

Washington, DC: Urban InstitutePress.

Jencks, C., & Mayer, S. (1990). The social conse-quences of growing up in a poor neighbor-hood. In L.E. Lynn & M.F.H. McGeary (Eds.),

Inner-city poverty in the United States

(pp. 111–186). Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

Katz, L.F., Kling, J.R., & Liebman, J.B. (2001). Mov-ing to Opportunity in Boston: Early results of arandomized mobility experiment.

QuarterlyJournal of Economics, 116

, 607–654.

Klebanov, P.K., Brooks-Gunn, J., McCarton, C., &McCormick, M.C. (1998). The contribution ofneighborhood and family income to develop-mental test scores over the first three years oflife.

Child Development, 69

, 1420–1436.

Leventhal, T., & Brooks-Gunn, J. (2000). The neigh-borhoods they live in: The effects of neighbor-hood residence upon child and adolescentoutcomes.

Psychological Bulletin, 126

, 309–337.

Leventhal, T., & Brooks-Gunn, J. (2001). Changingneighborhoods: Understanding how childrenmay be affected in the coming century.

Ad-vances in Life Course Research, 6

, 263–301.

Leventhal, T., & Brooks-Gunn, J. (2002).

A random-ized study of neighborhood effects on low-incomechildren’s educational outcomes.

Manuscript sub-mitted for publication.

Leventhal, T., & Brooks-Gunn, J. (in press). Mov-ing to Opportunity: An experimental study ofneighborhood effects on mental health.

Ameri-can Journal of Public Health.

Ludwig, J., Duncan, G.J., & Hirschfield, P. (2001).Urban poverty and juvenile crime: Evidencefrom a randomized housing-mobility experi-ment.

Quarterly Journal of Economics, 116

, 655–679.

Massey, D.S., & Denton, N.A. (1993).

Americanapartheid: Segregation and the making of the un-derclass.

Cambridge, MA: Harvard UniversityPress.

Rubinowitz, L.S., & Rosenbaum, J.E. (2000).

Crossingthe class and color lines: From public housing to whitesuburbia.

Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Sampson, R.J., Raudenbush, S.W., & Earls, F.(1997). Neighborhoods and violent crime: Amultilevel study of collective efficacy.

Science,277

, 918–924.

Wilson, W.J. (1987).

The truly disadvantaged: Theinnercity, the underclass, and public policy.

Chi-cago: University of Chicago Press.

at UNIV TORONTO on August 11, 2014cdp.sagepub.comDownloaded from