Ask whether "bad neighborhoods are bad for kids" and you get a variety of answers. But the short answer is "yes," according to a social scientist who lectured at the University of Utah recently.
Youths who grow up in poor neighborhoods are "more likely to suffer from every imaginable childhood malady," more apt to die young from accidents, low birth weight and violence and have increased criminal activity, said Dr. Susan Mayer, professor at the University of Chicago's Harris School of Public Policy. She visited the U. as part of its "Challenge Lecture" series.The problem is defining "neighborhoods"; they've been described as anything from one or two blocks to a section of town. Others base "neighborhood" on school boundaries. Residents, even in low-income parts of town, are apt to say they "live in a great neighborhood."
The federal government is embarking on a demonstration project to see if moving low-income people into more economically mixed neighborhoods will end some of the social problems traditionally associated with urban poverty.
The Moving to Opportunity Project will relocate a total of no more than 5,000 low-income, subsidized families in six cities into neighborhoods with low poverty rates to see what long-term difference it makes. Right now, Mayer said, no one's seriously guessing what the result will be.
The project's flaw, she said, is Congress mandated the move into areas with less than 10 percent poverty rate - an unrealistic goal.
When very-low income people move to an affluent neighborhood, they may be unhappy and move out for reasons broader than economics. And that may skew the results. "We want HUD to increase the sample size moving to mixed-income neighborhoods." And make sure "mixed" means just that.
A study of the lowest 10 percent of schools economically showed students who were three times more likely to drop out and more than three times as likely to have "been idle" after they graduated, rather than employed or pursuing higher education.
Social scientists believe that results from the effect kids have on each other, the role adults play in poor neighborhoods and the fact that institutions are able to offer less. Often, churches move out of poor neighborhoods. And schools are not wealthy enough to attract the best teachers.
Short, easy answers aside, she said, "the real answer is an unequivocal `we don't know.' "
Some social scientists believe living in "advantaged" neighborhoods has a bad effect on children, who assess their successes by comparing themselves to others.
If all that sounds confusing, hold onto your hats, Mayer warns. It gets worse. It turns out it's a bad idea to define an area by the average income of the households in it. Income is not even the most important factor affecting where parents live. In more than two-thirds of the so-called poverty areas, fewer than 40 percent of the residents are poor.
The Chicago Housing Authority has embarked on a controversial project to desegregate (based on income, not race) public housing by making a serious effort to move away from "projects" and put people in neighborhoods that are more economically diverse.
Evidence from that effort indicates that children in families who moved to suburbs were "wildly more successful," and more likely to graduate, go to college, find jobs and earn a decent wage.