Study: growing up in bad neighborhoods has a devastating impact

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-10/asa-sgu100311.php

Public release date: 4-Oct-2011

Contact: Daniel Fowler
[e-mail]
202-527-7885
http://www.asanet.org/">American Sociological Association

Study: growing up in bad neighborhoods has a devastating impact

WASHINGTON, DC -- Growing up in a poor neighborhood significantly reduces the chances that a child will graduate from high school, according to a study published in the October issue of the American Sociological Review. And, the longer a child lives in that kind of neighborhood, the more harmful the impact.

The study, by University of Michigan sociologists Geoffrey Wodtke and David Harding and University of Wisconsin-Madison sociologist Felix Elwert, is the first to capture the cumulative impact of growing up in America's most disadvantaged neighborhoods on a key educational outcome -- high school graduation.

"Compared to growing up in affluent neighborhoods, growing up in neighborhoods with high levels of poverty and unemployment reduces the chances of high school graduation from 96 percent to 76 percent for black children," says Wodtke, a Ph.D. student who works with Harding at the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR). "The impact on white children is also harmful, but not as large, reducing their chances of graduating from 95 percent to 87 percent."

In contrast to earlier research that examined neighborhood effects on children at a single point in time, the new study uses data from the ISR Panel Study of Income Dynamics to follow 2,093 children from age one through age 17, assessing the neighborhoods in which they lived every year.

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[Gidney N Cloyd]

1. Huh.

:)

[RaleighNCDUer]

2. IOW, closing 'bad' schools and shipping the kids off to more successful

schools will make very little difference.

To have successful schools, you need successful communities.

[DCKit]

3. Studies that make you go "Doh!!!"

"No shit Sherlock" is also acceptable.

[OKIsItJustMe]

4. Here’s why the study matters

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"Our results indicate that sustained exposure to disadvantaged neighborhoods has a much greater negative impact on the chances a child will graduate from high school than earlier research has suggested," says Wodtke.

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