Growing up in a poor neighborhood harms child development, but it remains unclear exactly what it is about these neighborhoods that make them so consequential above and beyond other aspects of children’s lives. This project examines why growing up in a poor neighborhood affects child academic achievement. Across many different academic disciplines, it is widely hypothesized that the effects of living in a poor neighborhood on child learning may be due to differences in school quality, exposure to various health hazards, and/or exposure to violent crime. Yet there is almost no empirical research that has put these hypothesized explanations to a rigorous empirical test. This project will fill a critical gap about why neighborhoods matter for children. Its findings will speak to public concerns about recent growth in neighborhood inequality as well as ongoing public debates about the most effective interventions for mitigating the harmful effects of concentrated poverty. Because the poor educational outcomes of children from disadvantaged neighborhoods likely work to reduce scientific literacy, hamper the economic competitiveness of the U.S., and engender obstacles to human flourishing in adulthood, findings from this project focused on understanding and mitigating the effects of neighborhood poverty on child learning will contribute to advancing the nation’s health, prosperity, and welfare.
This project will evaluate whether the effects of neighborhood poverty are due to differences in school quality, health hazards, or violence by linking and analyzing data from multiple different sources. These sources include (a) panel data on academic achievement from large cohorts of children in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study and the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods, (b) data on the socioeconomic composition of neighborhoods from the U.S. Census and American Community Survey, (c) administrative data on schools from the U.S. National Center for Education Statistics, (d) data on environmental health hazards, such as lead and air pollution, from the Chicago Department of Public Health and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and finally, (e) data on local violent crime rates from Location, Inc. Using these linked data sources, the potential outcomes framework, and novel statistical methods designed to adjust for the non-random selection of families into different neighborhoods over time, the project will estimate the cumulative effects of neighborhood poverty on academic achievement and then decompose these effects into components due to differences in the characteristics of schools attended by resident children, differences in exposure to lead and other neurotoxins, and differences in exposure to violent crime. Findings from the project will inform sociological theories regarding academic attainment, poverty, and neighborhood effects on child outcomes, particularly those tied to violence and risks to health.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
