What Can We Learn about Neighborhood Effects from the Moving to Opportunity Experiment?1

By Jens Ludwig, Jeffrey B. Liebman, Jeffrey R. Kling, G. Duncan, Lawrence F. Katz, Ronald C. Kessler, L. Sanbonmatsu. American Journal of Sociology, 2008

157 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Experimental estimates from Moving to Opportunity (MTO) show no significant impacts of moves to lower‐poverty neighborhoods on adult economic self‐sufficiency four to seven years after random assignment. The authors disagree with Clampet‐Lundquist and Massey's claim that MTO was a weak intervention and therefore uninformative about neighborhood effects. MTO produced large changes in neighborhood environments that improved adult mental health and many outcomes for young females. Clampet‐Lundquist and Massey's claim that MTO experimental estimates are plagued by selection bias is erroneous. Their new nonexperimental estimates are uninformative because they add back the selection problems that MTO's experimental design was intended to overcome.

Subfields: General Health Professions, Health, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5bc84717abe2e1808a48e175f2397089dc6dc44f

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In General Health Professions

1. G. Galster
2. S. Musterd
3. Roger Andersson
4. Maria Abascal
5. Delia Baldassarri

In Health

1. S. Musterd
2. G. Galster
3. Roger Andersson

In Sociology and Political Science

1. G. Galster
2. Roger Andersson
3. S. Musterd
4. Maria Abascal
5. Delia Baldassarri
6. Timo Kauppinen
7. M. van Ham
8. Patrick Sharkey

Citations in the corpus

• Field experiments across the social sciences (2017, background): “In 1982, the American Journal of Sociology hosted a debate on the analysis and interpretation of experimental data (Rossi et al. 1982, Zeisel 1982) that foreshadowed the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) debate decades later (Clampet-Lundquist & Massey 2008, Ludwig et al. 2008, Sampson 2008).”
• Who Is Affected by Neighbourhood Income Mix? Gender, Age, Family, Employment and Income Differences (2010, methodology): “— Random assignment experiments: data are produced by an experimental design whereby households are randomly assigned to different neighbourhoods, such as the moving to opportunity (MTO) demonstration (Goering and Feins, 2003; Orr et al., 2003; Kling et al., 2007; Ludwig et al., 2008).”
• Converging Evidence for Neighborhood Effects on Children's Test Scores: An Experimental, Quasi-experimental, and Observational Comparison* (2010, unknown): “This question remains the topic of ongoing discussion (and some disagreement) within the research and policy communities (see for example Clampet-Lundquist - 5 - and Massey, 2008, Ludwig et al., 2008, and Sampson 2008).”