Title
Neighborhoods and Academic Achievement: Results From The Moving to Opportunity Experiment
Author(s)
Lisa Sanbonmatsu Lisa Sanbonmatsu (NBER)
Jeffrey R. Kling Jeffrey 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
IRS
Paper Number
492
URL
https://dataspace.princeton.edu/bitstream/88435/dsp012801pg33b/1/492.pdf
File Function
Jel
N30, N31
Keyword(s)
neighborhood effects, social experiments, education
Suppress
false
Series
1