ABSTRACT
The issue of neighborhood effects has been a focus of much social science enquiry over the last decade, spurred largely by the work of Wilson (1987). He argues that neighborhood disadvantage plays a vital role in preventing low-income blacks from getting good jobs and escaping poverty, with chronic unemployment and social isolation from the mainstream economy causing a breakdown of social function. These types of poor neighborhood conditions have been hypothesized to have deleterious effects on virtually all forms of human and social capital and other outcomes, including education, income, welfare use, health outcomes, social support networks and civic engagement (Jencks ampentity Mayer, 1990; McClintock et al., 2005; Wilson, 1987). While most of this literature focuses on child and adolescent outcomes, there is also evidence that neighborhoods have effects on adults. For example, Mendenhall et al. (2005) find that the level of neighborhood resources affects women’s welfare receipt and employment. Others find that neighborhood conditions affect annual hours of work (Weinberg et al., 2004) and health outcomes (McClintock et al., 2005; Borrell et al., 2003), often linking high crime rates and poor housing conditions to these outcomes.
