ABSTRACT
This chapter draws on these critiques and the authors own reading of the literature to summarize the results of non-experimental research on neighborhood effects. It considers more recent experimental studies. The chapter summarizes the results of this very diverse group of studies. The basic descriptive analyses have shown that many dimensions of children's well-being vary significantly by neighborhood income levels and, less often, by other neighborhood characteristics such as residential stability, high school completion rate, female headship, social disorder, and social cohesion. A substantial part of the variation in children's outcomes by neighborhood income level is accounted for by differences in family income and other family characteristics. The size of neighborhood effects on children's outcomes is generally modest and considerably smaller than the effects of family and individual characteristics. The chapter also explains that few studies have tackled endogenous residential choice using non-experimental data and statistical models.
