Proposed research quantifies how residence in neighborhoods differing in concentrations of poor and minority populations affects low-income children residing in public housing. The study utilizes data from Denver Housing Authority's (DMA) Program, which has public housing units throughout Denver serving significant numbers of Black and Latino households. Because initial assignment of households to DMA housing mimics a random process, this represents an unusual natural experiment for overcoming methodological challenges (like selection bias) in measuring neighborhood effects. Phone interviews with 800 current and former DMA households with children provide retrospective information on children's outcomes in 5 domains (health, education, employment, behavioral and demographic) and probe mechanisms of how neighborhoods affect outcomes. Main Research question: For children who spent a considerable period during ages 0-18 in public housing, are there significant differences in their outcomes associated with differences in their neighborhoods? Subquestions: (1) What racial, income, demographic, crime, institutional resource, or other neighborhood indicators correlate most strongly with differences in outcomes? (2) Do correlations between outcomes and neighborhood indicators vary depending on child's developmental period? (3) Do correlations between child outcomes and neighborhood indicators suggest that the impact of neighborhood is contemporaneous with outcomes, lagged, or cumulative? (4) Are relationships above nonlinear? (5) Are there correlations between child outcomes and conditions in nearby neighborhoods? (6) Do answers to foregoing questions differ between Black and Latino children? (7) Between female and male children? Study also probes in a more exploratory fashion: (8) What are salient mechanisms operative in the neighborhood environment, and do these mechanisms vary by outcome domain, ethnicity or gender? Multiple regression analyses of various sorts are employed to test hypotheses and implement robustness tests, and follow-up interviews with 50 children are used to explore causal mechanisms. Findings should make important contributions to debates over the size, mechanism, and cross-group variability of neighborhood effects on health and developmental outcomes, and help guide affordable housing providers.
| Lucero, Jessica L; Santiago, Anna Maria; Galster, George C (2018) How Neighborhood Effects Vary: Childbearing and Fathering among Latino and African American Adolescents. Healthcare (Basel) 6: |
| Galster, George; Santiago, Anna; Lucero, Jessica (2015) Employment of Low-Income African American and Latino Teens: Does Neighborhood Social Mix Matter? Hous Stud 30:192-227 |
