Employment of Low-Income African American and Latino Teens: Does Neighborhood Social Mix Matter?

Abstract

We quantify how teen employment outcomes for low-income African Americans and Latinos relate to their neighborhood conditions during ages 14–17. Data come from surveys of Denver Housing Authority (DHA) households who have lived in public housing scattered throughout Denver County. Because DHA household allocation mimics random assignment to neighborhood, this program represents a natural experiment for overcoming geographic selection bias. Our logistic and Tobit regression analyses found overall greater odds of teen employment and more hours worked for those who lived in neighborhoods with higher percentages of pre-1940 vintage housing, property crime rates and child abuse rates, though the strength of relationships was highly contingent on gender and ethnicity. Teen employment prospects of African Americans were especially diminished by residence in more socially vulnerable, violent neighborhoods, implying selective potential gains from social mixing alternatives.

Neighborhood Social Mix and Adults' Income Trajectories: Longitudinal Evidence from Stockholm

“…In the US such experiments have been based on court-ordered, public housing racial-ethnic desegregation programs; elsewhere they have involved allocation of tenants to social housing or placement of refugees in particular locales. Rosenbaum (1991Rosenbaum ( , 1995, Rubinowitz and Rosenbaum (2000), Edin et al (2003), Åslund and Fredricksson (2009), Piil Damm (2009, DeLuca et al (2010) Galster et al (2015bGalster et al ( , 2015cGalster et al ( , 2015d, and Chyn (2016) find evidence of neighborhood effects on labor market outcomes in their analyses of natural experiments; only Oreopolos (2003) does not.…”

“…Unfortunately, there is no empirical consensus about neighborhood effects on labor market outcomes when using one of the aforementioned econometric techniques on non-experimental, observational datasets. 1 Several studies using US data (Weinberg et al 2004;Dawkins et al 2005;vartanian and Buck 2005;Bayer et al 2008;Cutler et al 2008;Sharkey 2012), several using Swedish data (Galster et al , 2010(Galster et al , 2015aHedman and Galster 2103), one Scottish study (van Ham and Manley 2009) and one French study (Sari 2012) find non-trivial neighborhood effects on various labor market outcomes. On the other hand, three Uk-based analyses van Ham and Manley 2010) and one from the US (Plotnick and Hoffman 1999) find minor, if any, neighborhood effects, and instead suggest selection dominates.…”

Adrift at the Margins of Urban Society

“…If fear of violence induces more caregiver monitoring and/or self-imposed restrictions on teens’ movements outside of home and school, a consequence may be superior high school performance and reduced incidences of antisocial and risky behaviors, which, in turn, could lead to greater odds of postsecondary schooling and employment. In other work (Galster, Santiago, and Lucero 2014; Galster, Santiago, Lucero, and Cutsinger 2014; Galster, Santiago, Stack, and Cutsinger 2014), we have identified statistical relationships corresponding to these arguments. Considerable ethnographic research documents the efforts of low-income parents to protect their children from exposure to violence (Anderson 1999; Furstenberg 1999; Galster and Santiago 2006).…”

“…Finally, we recognize that this study focuses on only one young adult outcome: social detachment. In companion papers (Galster, Santiago, and Lucero 2014; Galster, Santiago, Lucero, and Cutsinger 2014; Galster, Santiago, Stack, and Cutsinger 2014), we explore a wider variety of indicators related to the employment and educational outcomes for low-income, minority teens and young adults.…”

Socioeconomic characteristics of neighborhoods where youth in out-of-home care reside

“…One set of indicators of neighborhood quality commonly used in the literature is census tract socioeconomic characteristics (Aneshensel & Sucoff, 1996;Chahine, van Straaten, & Williams-Isom, 2005;Estabrooks, Lee, & Gyurcsik, 2003;Lee & Cubbin, 2002). Researchers have consistently found a link between census tract socioeconomic indicators (e.g., percentage of individuals in a geographic area living below the federal poverty level) and outcomes for children and adults who were not in out-of-home care (Beck, Simmons, Huang, & Kahn, 2012;Deutsch, Crockett, Wolff, & Russell, 2012;Galster, Santiago, & Lucero, 2015;Gibson, Perley, Bailey, Barbour, & Kershaw, 2015;Gonzales, Cauce, Friedman, & Mason, 1996;Krieger, Chen, Waterman, Rehkopf, & Subramanian, 2003;Powell & Han, 2011). While much is known about how neighborhood quality affects adolescents and young adults in the general population, it is unclear how this translates to youth with child protection involvement who are living in out-of-home care, where home neighborhoods change frequently and connections to potential supports are frequently disrupted (Barth, Wildfire, & Green, 2006).…”