How Much Does a Neighborhood Affect the Poor?
Government test tracks families who moved; girls flourish, not boys.

Jon Hilsenrath & Rafael Gerena-Morales:

Climbing out of poverty hasn't been as easy as getting on the bus. She says her life is now drug-free and more stable, and her children are growing up in a better environment. Yet in many ways, her struggles traveled with her.

"You really need to have a focus to get out of the ghetto," says Ms. Grayson, a New York native.

Her experience offers clues to a question society has wrestled with for years: Can a family escape poverty by getting out of the neighborhood where it takes root? It also sheds light on the government's shifting efforts to use housing policy as a solution to poverty.

A $16 billion federal infrastructure has built up around housing vouchers designed to give poor families more choices about where to live. About two million families currently use "Section 8" vouchers that allow them to move with subsidized rent. Since 1993, the government has been demolishing urban housing projects and forcing families to resettle in other places, sometimes with vouchers.

But results show that may only partially be true. "It would have been wonderful to have discovered the magic bullet," says Jeffrey Liebman, a Harvard economist who has studied the program.

Findings, he says, were more complicated. Among them: boys whose families moved actually fared worse than boys who stayed in bad neighborhoods. Girls, however, fared significantly better. Adults felt better, physically and mentally, than those who stayed behind, but didn't do better financially.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at December 29, 2006 6:14 AM
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