The moderating effect of higher education on the intergenerational transmission of residing in poverty neighbourhoods

Abstract

It is well-known that socioeconomic outcomes and (dis)advantage over the life course can be transmitted from parent to child. It is increasingly suggested that these intergenerational effects also have a spatial dimension, although empirical research into this topic remains scarce. Previous research from Sweden and the United States shows that children who grow up in disadvantaged neighbourhoods experience long-term exposure to such neighbourhoods in their adult lives. This study contributes to the literature by examining to what extent educational attainment can break the link between parental neighbourhood disadvantage and the neighbourhood experiences of children as adults up to 12 years after leaving the parental home. We use longitudinal register data from the Netherlands to study a complete cohort of parental home leavers, covering 119,167 individuals who were followed from 1999 to 2012. Using sequence analyses as a visualisation method, and multilevel logit models, we demonstrate that children who lived in deprived neighbourhoods with their parents are more likely to live in similar neighbourhoods later in life than children who grew up in more affluent neighbourhoods. We find that intergenerational neighbourhood patterns of disadvantage can be discontinued when individuals attain higher education over time. Discontinuation is however less prevalent among individuals from ethnic minority groups.

Inherited and Spatial Disadvantages: A Longitudinal Study of Early Adult Neighborhood Careers of Siblings

“…Turning to the European experience, van Ham et al (2014) demonstrated that, even in a strong welfare state country such as Sweden, where inequalities are substantially lower than in the United States, similar intergenerational transmissions of place still occurred (see also Gustafson, Katz, and € Osterberg 2016). Recently, de Vuijst, van Ham, and Kleinhans (2017) demonstrated similar findings using population register data from The Netherlands. Taken together, these findings suggest that to understand adult spatial outcomes in the neighborhood hierarchy-in other words, who lives in which types of neighborhoodswe must take into account childhood neighborhood experiences as well as other parental resources.…”

Working Together for Local Integration of Migrants and Refugees

“…In addition, newcomers are more likely to live where existing communities are already established. These intergenerational neighbourhood patterns are still shown to be much stronger for ethnic minorities than for other groups (van Ham et al, 2014;de Vuijst, van Ham and Kleinhans, 2015). Neighbourhood effects include socialisation processes (e.g.…”

Divided Cities

“…For example, the concentration of poverty of the neighbourhood where parents live influences (or is related to) the concentration of poverty of their children's school, and this will affect the outcomes of these children later in life (through contextual school and neighbourhood effects). There is strong intergenerational transmission of poverty and living in poverty neighbourhoods from parents to children, and these children affect their own children as they grow up (Van Ham et al, 2014;De Vuijst et al, 2017;Hedman et al, 2017). These individual outcomes, in turn, reinforce the sorting of different socio-economic groups into different neighbourhoods.…”