Question

Describe the difference between individual/household poverty and neighborhood poverty. How does being poor in a poor neighborhood increase the impact of economic disadvantage?

Answer 1

Low-income families live in many types of communities, but some neighborhoods have much higher concentrations of poor families than others. After the decline in the proportion of Americans living in neighborhoods with concentrated poverty in the 1990s — from 20.0 per cent in 1990 to 18.1 per cent in 2000—this trend reversed during the decade following the Great Recession. From 2000 to 2010, the percentage of people living in high-poverty neighborhoods increased to 25.7% (Bishaw, 2014), and this trend was most pronounced among families with children (Owens, 2016). This occurred against the background of increasing economic segregation, fueled at least in part by increasing income inequality among families with children (Owens, 2016). In poverty studies, family-level economic resources, rather than community or neighborhood resources, are often privileged as key determinants. This is based on the assumption that families have a choice where they live, even if their choice of residential neighborhoods is limited by their income. How family and neighborhood poverty shape family life and children's development, it is important to understand how race and ethnicity affect living experiences. Economic and racial separation "are distinct but overlapping phenomena" . Sharkey (2014 ) shows that neighborhood contexts are particularly relevant to the lives of African-American children living in poor urban areas, due to the way in which the experiences of multiple generations of concentrated neighborhood poverty have affected their family lives. African-American children are not only more likely to be poor, but their poverty is compounded by the fact that their parents have been raised in the context of poor and racially segregated communities, which have remained in decline through disinvestment. In addition, even middle-class African-Americans tend to live in neighborhoods that are significantly poorer and have higher concentrations of minorities residents relative to their middle-class white counterparts.

However, when considering changes in exposure to concentrated poverty over time, racial and ethnic trends are more complicated. Although more Americans live in neighborhoods of concentrated poverty after the recession, the increase in exposure to neighborhood poverty was not equally shared. Whites saw the highest percentage increase in exposure to neighborhood poverty as poverty shifted to the suburbs and to the Midwest and South. In fact, the black-and-white gap in neighborhood poverty declined between 1980 and 2010, not because blacks made gains, but because more poor whites were living in poor neighborhoods (Firebaugh & Acciai, 2016). Thus, the increase in living in concentrated poverty among whites was greater, despite the fact that urban and African-Americans are still much more likely to live in concentrated poverty. Although not central to this study, these recent changes in living conditions from the perspective of young children and their potential link to school readiness deserve further exploration.

being poor in a poor neighborhood increase the impact of economic disadvantage

Schools, for the most part, reflect the demographic makeup of their surrounding neighborhoods. This means that, from preschool onwards, children are likely to attend school with other children of the same socio-economic status, and often of the same racial and ethnic group, particularly in urban areas. School income segregation has increased in recent years. At the same time , schools are more racially and ethnically diverse (because the US as a whole is more diverse now)—though school segregation by race and ethnicity continues to be high. For the most part, schools with a high proportion of low-income students and/or color students have less funding, spend less on facilities , lack sufficient instructional supplies, and have poorer physical construction conditions than their higher-income or more racially and ethnically diverse student bodies equivalent schools. Such factors will ultimately turn into lower educational attainment for neighborhood residents as a whole.

Neighborhoods with predominantly poor residents, or from a racial or ethnic minority group, are more likely to have environmental conditions that pose a risk to the health of children. Which involve hazards outside the home, such as poor air quality or proximity to highways from nearby industrial sources. And they include hazards linked to older and deteriorating housing, such as mold, pest infection, peeling lead paint, and lead pipes. Both of these environmental threats present a significant risk to the health and safety of children. Lead, for example , can cause brain harm and affect the memory of children and other executive processing skills such as synchronized planning, concentration and management of multiple tasks. Such deficits are related, among other things, to behavioral problems and poor academic performance.

Exposure to outdoor play is correlated with a variety of children's positive outcomes – from improved executive functioning abilities to physical activity. Yet children living in high-poverty neighborhoods are less likely to have access to safe places to play outside, such as parks, sports fields, and biking or walking trails. Worse yet, indoor play spaces for those same kids may contain  environmental hazards that pose health threats as well, as noted above.Where children grow up to higher incomes than their parents — have less residential race and income segregation (among other features). An analysis estimated that poor families living in areas with low economic mobility will take four generations to reach the average income level of the area, while poor families living in areas with high economic mobility will achieve this average in three generations. Higher-income parents residing in communities where neighbourhoods are highly segregated have the financial freedom to choose to live in those neighbourhoods with higher-quality schools, more public services, fewer violence, and other amenities that promote their children's healthy growth. They will also pass on the valuable asset to their children if they own a house, while traditionally racist housing policies could have forced black parents, in particular, into a rental market or a market in which housing is less value. Higher-income parents are able to give their children those opportunities and assets that parents are unlikely to be able to provide in disadvantaged neighborhoods. This perpetuates gender inequality — and segregation.