Causality issues in attributing the role of place – Setting the Scene

Causality issues in attributing the role of place – Setting the Scene Simon Burgess July 2006

Attributing the role of place • Setting the scene: • Greater availability of richer data • New theoretical approaches • Persistent policy questions • The importance of getting methods of analysis right, and understanding what can and cannot be learnt from a dataset. www.bris.ac.uk/CMPO

Data • New data, or matching of different datasets: • administrative datasets • geographical data. • Four examples: • Children in a local area, and friendships • Area deprivation and life chances • Physical aspects of places • Patterns of criminality in areas www.bris.ac.uk/CMPO

Example 1: • Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) • Census birth cohort from one area (City of Bristol and surrounding areas, “CUBA”); spatial information included. • Look at peer and friendship links between children – mapping links • Effects of peers on behaviour?? www.bris.ac.uk/CMPO

Example 2: • Match large and rich longitudinal dataset – British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) with (very) local area data • Use bespoke neighbourhoods and Census data to characterise these neighbourhoods • Does living in a poor neighbourhoods influence your future life chances? www.bris.ac.uk/CMPO

Income level and growth www.bris.ac.uk/CMPO

Example 3: • Physical aspects of places • Traditionally pretty small scale studies, because of the cost of looking at many places. • But new technologies … www.bris.ac.uk/CMPO

www.bris.ac.uk/CMPO

Example 4: • Patterns of criminality in local areas • Investigate aspects of place as measured by patterns of crime • Bringing together administrative data plus google map technology: • www.chicagocrime.org www.bris.ac.uk/CMPO

www.bris.ac.uk/CMPO

Theoretical Approaches • Economic analysis of social networks is popular at the moment. • Mapping networks • Who joins networks? • What is the impact of networks on individual outcomes? • Networks are certainly not necessarily spatial, but same fundamental set of issues. www.bris.ac.uk/CMPO

Policy Questions • Economists thought of as obsessed with causality. • Causality is certainly not the only interesting empirical question to answer. • But in terms of policy advice, establishing causality is the key. • A correlation between poverty and place (for example) could arise in many different ways: the appropriate policy response depends on what is the causal factor acting on poverty. www.bris.ac.uk/CMPO

All this points to the huge importance of getting the techniques right: • Getting the most out of the rich new data resources, • Giving the right answers for policy. •  “Empirical Analysis of Social Interactions” by Charles Manski www.bris.ac.uk/CMPO

Causality issues in attributing the role of place – Setting the Scene