Title

Neighborhoods and Academic Achievement: Results From the Moving to Opportunity Experiment

Author(s)

Lisa Sonbonmatsu Lisa Sonbonmatsu (NBER)

Kling R. Kling Kling Kling (Princeton University and NBER)

Greg J. Duncan Greg Duncan (Northwestern University)

Jeanne Brooks-Gunn Jeanne Brooks-Gunn (Columbia University)

Abstract

Families originally living in public housing were assigned housing vouchers by lottery, encouraging moves to neighborhoods with lower poverty rates. Although we had hypothesized that reading and math test scores would be higher among children in families offered vouchers (with larger effects among younger children), the results show no significant effects on test scores for any age group among over 5000 children ages 6 to 20 in 2002 who were assessed four to seven years after randomization. Program impacts on school environments were considerably smaller than impacts on neighborhoods, suggesting that achievement-related benefits from improved neighborhood environments are small.

Creation Date

2004-08

Section URL ID

Paper Number

7

URL

https://dataspace.princeton.edu/bitstream/88435/dsp011z40ks860/4/7ers.pdf

File Function

Jel

I28; I38

Keyword(s)

neighborhood effects; social experiment; education

Suppress

false

Series

2