Understanding How Place Matters for Kids

1. Understanding How Place Matters for Kids Susan J. Popkin Bloomberg School November 11, 2009

2. How Place Matters for Kids • Policy goal : ensure that all children have opportunity to reach their full potential • Where children live affects life chances • Need to understand how neighborhood environments matter

3. Ecological Model of Development • Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory of human development; there are multiple spheres of influence that affect children and adolescents as they move toward adulthood: • individual characteristics • family background • school • neighborhood

4. Costs of Concentrated Poverty • Risks for adolescents • Poor physical and mental health, alienation • Delinquency, risky behavior • Criminal justice involvement • Early sexual initiation • Pregnancy, STIs

5. Program on Neighborhoods and Youth Development • Mission • Understand the neighborhood-level factors that influence well-being and development of children and youth • Identify and evaluate evidence-based strategies aimed at improving life chances of youth from distressed communities

6. Program on Neighborhoods and Youth Development: Research Agenda 1) Understand the dimensions of neighborhood environments that lead to negative outcomes for children 2) Expand existing research on housing and community-based interventions to focus on improving outcomes for vulnerable youth 3) Explore how place affects development, health, and risky behavior for children and youth.

7. 1) Identifying Key Neighborhood Dimensions • Evidence from HUD’s MTO Demonstration • Vouchers help families move to lower-poverty areas • Demonstration in five cities • Volunteers randomly assigned to experimental group, comparison group, or in-place control

8. Mixed Findings from MTO Major impacts on quality of life No gains in employment, education Improvements in mental and physical health for women and girls, but not for boys Qualitative follow up suggests safety is key Mover girls escaped the “female fear” Framework that can help explain how neighborhoods youth outcomes

9. How Distressed Neighborhoods Affect Adolescent Girls • From MTO: identified “coercive sexual environment” as key mechanism • Challenges: • Developing effective measures of CSE • Understanding neighborhood dimensions • Paths to youth outcome • Idenifying protective factors

10. Two Research Initiatives • Build on MTO Final Evaluation • New qualitative and exploratory quantitative analysis • Baltimore Project • New study exploring neighborhood-level CSE • Partnering with schools and local researchers • Neighborhood typology, survey

11. 2) Housing and Neighborhood Interventions • Builds on 10 years of UI research on HOPE VI & MTO • All intended to improve life circumstances of very low-income public housing families

12. MTO, HOPE VI, and Hard to House Three-City Study of MTO HOPE VI Panel Study Hard to House Demo Inform new generation of housing & neighborhood Policy—Promise Neighborhoods, Choice Neighborhoods

13. 3) Vulnerable Youth and the Transition to Adulthood Importance of focusing on young children Using NLSY to understand how neighborhoods influence outcomes for youth Understanding how place affects youth’s health outcomes

14. Growing the Program A busy agenda Launching new research in Baltimore Building on MTO, HOPE VI, and Hard to House research Exploring key issues using existing datasets