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Neighborhood May Not Affect Academic Performance

According to a new study published by the Hoover Institution, relocating poor families to less poor neighborhoods may not be enough to improve the academic performance of those families' children. The study, released August 14, was a randomized evaluation of the Moving to Opportunity program, a federal housing program involving 4,248 families in five major cities that were randomly given or denied federal housing vouchers to move out of their high-poverty neighborhoods. The cities involved were Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York.

The studyfound no significant difference about seven years later between the achievement of children who moved to more middle-class neighborhoods and those who didn't.

Harvard University sociologist William Julius Wilson told the Washington Post that although the families that were studied moved to neighborhoods that weren't as poor, they still had many disadvantages. He pointed out that three-fifths of the families relocated to neighborhoods that were still racially segregated, and as many as 41 percent of the families who entered low-poverty neighborhoods subsequently moved back to more disadvantaged neighborhoods.

 

Questions, ideas, or in need of more information? Please contact Stacey Pusey at 302-295-8349.

 

Hoover Institution

"Neighborhoods' Effect On Grades Challenged"
The New York Times

 

 

 

 

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