ABSTRACT
A long-standing tradition of ecological research has documented the negative conditions for children associated with concentrated urban poverty and related dimensions of structural disadvantage such as racial segregation. The range of child and adolescent outcomes correlated with multiple forms of concentrated disadvantage includes infant mortality, low birthweight, teenage childbearing, dropping out of high school, child maltreatment, and adolescent delinquency (for a recent overview and set of empirical studies, see Brooks-Gunn, Duncan, & Aber, 1997). Much less understood, however, are the reasons for these correlations. As Jencks and Mayer (1990) and Sampson, Morenoff, and Earls (1999) argued, if “neighborhood effects” on child and adolescent outcomes exist, presumably they are constituted from social processes that involve collective aspects of community life. What are the collective processes that make for a healthy neighborhood environment for children and adolescents? How are neighborhood mechanisms measured? What are their structural sources of variation? Are neighborhood mechanisms embedded in citywide processes that transcend local boundaries? In short, and in the words of the National Family Symposium, “Does it take a village?”
