UCLA
Neighborhood effects, neighborhood problems
and policy solutions
Discussant’s Comments on Policy Responses to
Neighborhood effects on Education, Work,
Crime, and Health
7 April, 2011
William A.V. Clark
University of California Los Angeles/ CHR St Andrews
UCLA
Introduction
• Places are different
• Neighborhood conceptions are both positive –
(Beverly Hills, Faubourg St Honore) and negative–
wrong side of the tracks, lower east side, dog town,
pole town – stigmatization
• Place based interventions are a response to
difference, usually to negative differences
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Basis of intervention
Neighborhoods are (identifiable)
• Distinctive social worlds;
• Territorially bounded;
• Organization based on local institutions;
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But of varying form
• Nominal Neighborhoods: named, but no precise
limits;
• Absolute Neighborhoods: explicitly defined areas;
• Functional Neighborhoods: activity based;
• Community neighborhoods: interaction based;
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Three Seminars
• The question/s across two previous seminars
have been about whether we have a theory of
neighborhood effects and how do we
understand dynamic neighborhoods -what is
the role of place
• Now, can we intervene with ABI’s – what is the
policy impetus and how sure are we that we
can make a difference with ABI
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Overview
• Four papers on substantive issues that have place
relevance (presuming we have neighborhood theory)
• Education, worklessness, crime and health
• All are central issues for social well being
• Implicit assumption is that we know “the effect” and we
can do something about it (take each paper in turn).
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Education
• Response to poor education outcomes – improve
system, target neighborhoods
• ABI clearly linked to wider regeneration of areas
(evidence?)
• Still only partially successful because meso level
approach but need macro too
• Need to go from redistribution to recognition (but
how, not spelled out)
• Solution – give power back to schools and
communities – but how and do they want it?
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Worklessness
• Persistent spatial concentration of worklessness
• Best route out of poverty is work - so deal with worklessness
in deprived neighborhoods
• Causes –usual suspects (econ restr., culture of worklessness,
social capital, stigmatization, poor public transport)
• To intervene need to know the types of worklessness (can we
distinguish and how?)
• But again, policies have limited impact (p.16) and do not do
much (p.19)-no significant difference in gap between most
and least deprived
• Interventions at local level poorly positioned to deal with
wider change in labor markets
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Crime
•
•
•
•
•
A lot of interest from Sampson’s work on collective efficacy
and role of trust, by extension neighborhood capacity for
informal control.
BUT Really only one study and there are questions about the
robustness of the results (Veysey and Messner)
Still not a lot on HOW the neighborhood works, this paper
tackles that question
Specifically they show that people look beyond the immediate
neighborhood
That is the neighborhood is more than the neighborhood and
it reiterates the issue of neighborhood definition.
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Crime (2)
• Ok but what should we do, what is the policy implication of
this research?
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Health
• The paper examines two questions – is poor health
concentrated and do socially disadvantaged neighborhoods
experience lower quality physical environments.
• A discussion of smoking outcomes is used as a springboard to
discussions of environmental justice
• Sorting/ migration is identified as a major factor in the
creation of difference – who leaves who enters becomes
determinant.
• But health behavior effects are elusive – no or low association
of access and outcomes
• What does this mean for policy?
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Health (2)
• The smoking study – two processes:
• Selection effects in migration such that those prone to
smoking are more likely to end up in one place than another
• And, smokers are more likely to move to areas where other
smokers are more likely to live
• Question: is the location decision made by smokers vis a vis
non smokers because they are smokers or because they
happen to be of low socio economic status and it is the status
that is causing locational clustering?
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A digression on Income and Health
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Income distribution
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Observations
• Neighborhood effect or income effect?
• And how to deal with the modifiable areal
unit problem (MAUP)
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Health by Neighborhood Type
Individual
Logistic
Blk Group
Poisson
Tracts
OLS
Satisfied
0.253
1.565
0.261
Safe
0.541
0.043
0.213
0.277
Latino
-0.515
Female
-0.458
0.027
0.526
0.575
Average Age
-0.016
Married
0.248
0.016
0.229
0.246
BS/BA or greater
1.429
0.499
0.964
0.954
R-squared
p < 0.05
Community
OLS
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Life expectancy in Glasgow
14km apart: 28
year difference in
life expectancy
Lenzie
Life expectancy=82
Calton
Life expectancy=54
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What is the question-from a policy perspective
1. Are the areas different because of population composition
2. Are they different from treatment effects - one area has
superior facilities and staff
3. Are they different BECAUSE there are area effects – noxious
industry, lead paint etc
WHAT IS THE RELATIVE IMPORTANCE OF EACH
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The underlying question
• If the bulk of the difference is composition effects then
• THE QUESTION IS HOW THESE AREAS ENDED UP WITH SUCH
DIFFERENT COMPOSITIONS
• The answer – residential sorting ( see Clark and Morrison Residential sorting, neighbourhood effects and social
mobility: evidence from a large scale survey)
• but what are the processes which “sorted” people into these
two neighborhoods?
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Concluding observations
• Sorting out the sorting process is central to understanding the
uneven concentrations of socio –economic groups
• Unless we can sort out the sorting process we won’t get close
to sorting out the neighborhood effects
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Review and Overview
1.
They (neighborhood effects) may be mostly an area outcome not an
area affect;
2.
If neighborhood effects exist, they are probably small, may be
dependent upon your definition of neighborhood, and difficult to
detect;
3.
Analysis of outlier neighborhoods may be more useful (e.g, poor
neighborhoods with good health OR wealthy neighborhoods with
poor health);
4.
A sorting focus gives us both theory and testable measures.