Durable effects of concentrated disadvantage on verbal ability among African-American children

By R. Sampson, Patrick Sharkey, Stephen Raudenbush. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2008

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Disparities in verbal ability, a major predictor of later life outcomes, have generated widespread debate, but few studies have been able to isolate neighborhood-level causes in a developmentally and ecologically appropriate way. This study presents longitudinal evidence from a large-scale study of >2,000 children ages 6–12 living in Chicago, along with their caretakers, who were followed wherever they moved in the U.S. for up to 7 years. African-American children are exposed in such disproportionate numbers to concentrated disadvantage that white and Latino children cannot be reliably compared, calling into question traditional research strategies assuming common points of overlap in ecological risk. We therefore focus on trajectories of verbal ability among African-American children, extending recently developed counterfactual methods for time-varying causes and outcomes to adjust for a wide range of predictors of selection into and out of neighborhoods. The results indicate that living in a severely disadvantaged neighborhood reduces the later verbal ability of black children on average by ≈ 4 points, a magnitude that rivals missing a year or more of schooling.

Subfields: Education, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3db3202931776ba5be0fe637814450ac25564a89

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Citations in the corpus

Income Inequality and Income Segregation1 (2011, background): “…evidence for such “neighborhood effects,” however, remains both mixed and contested (see, e.g., Jencks and Mayer 1990; Rosenbaum and Popkin 1991; Sampson et al. 1997, 2008; Waitzman and Smith 1998a, 1998b; Leventhal and Brooks-Gunn 2000; Katz, Kling, and Liebman 2007; Clampet-Lundquist and…”
The Impact of Housing Assistance on Child Outcomes: Evidence from a Randomized Housing Lottery (2015, background): “Similar issues are addressed by Rubinowitz and Rosenbaum (2000), Oreopoulos (2003), Sampson, Sharkey, and Raudenbush (2008), and Schwartz (2012). at Serials D epartm ent on M arch 15, 2015 http://qje.oxfordjournals.org/ D ow nloaded from reducing the fraction of income they must devote to rent.”
The Mediating Role of Heart Rate on the Social Adversity-Antisocial Behavior Relationship (2015, background): “Studies have indicated that disadvantaged neighborhoods affect cognitive ability which is in turn associated with antisocial behavior (McGloin and Pratt 2003; Sampson, Sharkey, and Raudenbush 2008; Sharkey 2010).”
Residential Segregation by Income , 1970-2009 (2013, result): “…studies find evidence that prolonged residence in very poor neighborhoods harms schooling outcomes (Burdick-Will et al. 2011; Harding 2003; Sampson, Sharkey, and Raudenbush 2008; Wodtke, Harding, and Elwert 2011), though other observational studies find smaller or insignificant…”
An Empirical Assessment of What We Know About Structural Covariates of Homicide Rates: A Return to a Classic 20 Years Later (2010, positive): “Many of these ideas have been empirically examined in the criminological literature and widely supported (see Krivo & Peterson, 1996, 2000; Kubrin, 2003; Kubrin & Weitzer, 2003; Lee & Ousey, 2007; Ousey, 1999; Parker, 2004; Parker & McCall, 1999; Phillips, 1997, 2002; Sampson et al., 2008; Sampson, ”
Inequality in Children’s Contexts (2016, background): “…adolescent outcomes, including psychological well-being, test scores, educational attainment, and teen pregnancy (Brooks-Gunn et al. 1993; Chetty, Hendren, and Katz forthcoming; Jencks and Mayer 1990; Owens 2010; Sampson, Sharkey, and Raudenbush 2008; Wodtke 2013; Wodtke, Harding, and Elwert 2011).”
School Segregation and Racial Academic Achievement Gaps (2016, neutral): “…children’s cognitive development and long- term educational outcomes (BurdickWill et al. 2011; Chetty, Hendren, and Katz 2016; Sampson, Sharkey, and Raudenbush 2008; Shar key 2010; Wodtke, Harding, and Elwert 2011), residential segregation may lead to achievement gaps and other forms of…”