HKS779

Case Number 2007.0

The Geography of Poverty: Exploring the Role of Neighborhoods in the

Lives of Urban, Adolescent Poor

Introduction

1
In the 1990s, nearly half the poor in the United States lived in inner city ghettos. These blighted neighbor-
hoods were overrun by joblessness, violence and drugs. Some academics argued that, despite a steady infusion of
social programs, inner cities had proven resistant to change because of an immutable “culture of poverty” among
the residents. Others maintained that a high concentration of low-income households drove generational poverty,
2
affecting both the well-being and future prospects of poor families. For decades though, social scientists could not
determine whether poverty was shaped by neighborhood factors or by personal and family characteristics. Then,
in 1994, the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) launched a unique housing ex-
periment called Moving to Opportunity.

In the American canon of anti-poverty programs, Moving to Opportunity (MTO) stood out for its ambitious yet
simple design. The large-scale program gave thousands of extremely poor families the chance to move to better
neighborhoods. MTO was the first to empirically test the premise that neighborhoods with better homes, schools,
and job prospects—and lower crime—could lift families out of poverty.

Between 1994 and 1998, MTO was implemented in five cities: Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and
New York. Low-income families living in areas with more than 40 percent poverty could volunteer to be in the pro-
gram. Under the experiment, more than 4,600 families were randomly assigned to receive housing vouchers. One
group received no offer to move (control), and another received housing vouchers to relocate only to neighbor-
3
hoods with less than a ten percent poverty rate (treatment). Just like in clinical trials, MTO gave social scientists

1
Eleanor Baugher and Leatha-Lamison White, “Poverty in the United States: 1995,” Current Population Reports, P60-194.
2
William Wilson, The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, The Underclass, and Public Policy, Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1987.
3
Yet another set of families received housing vouchers but no restrictions on where they could move. These families served as
the comparison group. Families were not required to use the housing voucher. The percentage of families that “took up” the
voucher to move varied by city.

This case was written by Anjani Datla, Case Writer for Senior Lecturer in Public Policy, Hannah Riley Bowles at the John F. Ken-
nedy School of Government (HKS), Harvard University, for use at the HKS. Funding for this case was provided by the Joseph B.
Tompkins, Jr. Fund for Case Study and Research. HKS cases are developed solely as the basis for class discussion. Cases are not
intended to serve as endorsements, sources of primary data, or illustrations of effective or ineffective management. (January
2013).

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 the opportunity to untangle the effect of place on poverty, and to learn if a better neighborhood could directly
improve the lives of the poor.

For the next ten years, the program collected detailed data for all MTO families on a broad range of measures
such as physical health, educational attainment, emotional well-being, employment, and criminal behavior. In
2003, a mid-term evaluation of MTO revealed a controversial and surprising outcome. After being placed in neigh-
borhoods with low poverty, teen girls appeared to benefit far more from their new surroundings than teen boys.
Girls who had moved to neighborhoods with low poverty reported significant mental health gains and reduction in
risky behaviors when compared to their counterparts living in poorer areas. In stark contrast, boys who had relo-
cated to better neighborhoods demonstrated no such gains in mental health, and were more likely to engage in
4
risky behavior than those living in areas of high poverty.

In follow-up studies, leading economists at Harvard University took a closer look at the MTO data on adoles-
cents and offered several hypotheses for the divergent outcomes among girls and boys. The researchers conceded
that quantitative analysis had identified important differences by gender, but could not explain the social process-
5
es or experiences that led to those differences. They called for a different kind of research methodology to exam-
ine what quantitative data could not. Popularly known as qualitative research, this form of analysis used in-depth
interviews to uncover the story behind the numbers.

Teenagers at Highest Risk

In the 1990s, although academics were divided on the root causes of poverty, there was broad consensus that
children and teenagers living in inner cities were overwhelmingly at risk. In addition to the impact that poverty had
on their physical and mental health, low-income adolescents were more likely to drop out of school, bear children,
use drugs and be incarcerated for criminal activity. Experts observed that in the face of social isolation and abuse,
these teenagers lacked support at critical life stages, creating a downward spiral that stretched into adulthood and
subsequent generations.

A substantial body of research provided insights into the social contexts influencing adolescent behavior in ex-
tremely poor neighborhoods, but no study had predicted the large variations by gender seen under MTO. In 2003,
an interdisciplinary group of academics led by sociologist Kathryn Edin at the Harvard Kennedy School, came to-
gether to conduct qualitative research as follow-up to the findings of the MTO evaluation, and the work of Harvard
economists Lawrence Katz, Jeffrey Kling and Jeffrey Liebman. With the help of in-depth interviews they would offer
6
“a window into the worldviews, experiences, daily lives, and social contexts of [MTO] youths.”

4
Larry Orr, Judie. D. Feins, Robin Jacob, Eric Beecroft, Lisa Sanbonmatsu, Lawrence F. Katz, Jeffrey B. Liebman, and Jeffrey R.
Kling, “Moving to Opportunity: Interim Impacts Evaluation,” Department of Housing and Urban Development, 2003.
5
Jeffrey R. Kling, Jeffrey B. Liebman, and Lawrence F. Katz, “Experimental Analysis of Neighborhood Effects,” Econometrica, Vol.
75, No. 1, (2007): 83-119.
6
Susan Clampet-Lundquist, Kathryn Edin, Jeffrey R. Kling, and Greg J. Duncan, “Moving Teenagers out of High-Risk Neighbor-
hoods: How Girls Fare Better than Boys,” American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 116 No. 4, (2011): 1154-89.

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 Qualitative Research Methods

Edin and co-authors focused on two of the five MTO cities, Baltimore and Chicago, because of limited funds.
Researchers contacted 184 MTO families chosen at random. In all, 131 families were interviewed. The authors nar-
rowed analysis to two specific groups: families who used the voucher to relocate (treatment) and the families that
7
were never offered the voucher (control). The sample size for these groups encompassed 86 teens (34 in treat-
ment and 52 in control). The interviews were conducted between July 2003 and June 2004, six to nine years after
families were first placed in neighborhoods with low poverty (at which point many families had moved out of MTO
8
placement areas into neighborhoods with greater levels of poverty). All the teenagers in Baltimore and Chicago
were African-American and lived in neighborhoods that were predominantly African-American. On average, girls in
both the treatment and control groups were slightly older than boys (average age for girls across the groups was
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17, and, for boys, 16).

The interviews were set up as loosely structured conversations where researchers hoped to learn the “whole
story.” The questions were organized under six categories: “Teens’ views and experiences of their neighborhoods,
perceptions of their relative social status, their experiences at school, their daily routines, their adult and peer
networks, and their mental and physical health.” To obtain specific and in-depth narratives, the researchers began
with a predetermined set of questions, but altered the order and wording “to fit the flow of the interview and the
particulars of the person’s story.” Sample questions included: “Where do you hang out in the neighborhood,” and
“What do you like best/least in your neighborhood.” The interviewers followed up each question with probes, ei-
ther provided in the instructions or based on their discretion.

The researchers analyzed behavioral patterns among adolescent girls and boys in the control group to under-
stand gender norms and social patterns in the absence of the MTO intervention. Then they turned to adolescents
in the treatment group. Unlike in quantitative studies where social scientists make causal links through deductive
analysis, the goal of this qualitative study was to inductively analyze the interviews and generate hypotheses about
the underlying social processes fueling the differences between girls and boys.

Why Did Girls Fare Better than Boys?

Under the MTO experiment a recurring pattern had emerged in all five MTO cities. It appeared that “low-
income girls were able to take advantage of the move to a better neighborhood in ways that boys were not.” Anal-
ysis of the in-depth interviews revealed six potential factors for these surprising outcomes. All of them stemmed
from fundamental differences in how adolescent boys and girls engaged with the world.

7
The qualitative research’s definition of treatment group included only those families that had relocated with vouchers, while
the quantitative research defined the treatment group as all families that received the housing voucher. In Baltimore 58 per-
cent of the families with vouchers moved to low-poverty neighborhoods and in Chicago only 34 percent.
8
On average, post-MTO neighborhoods were poorer than placement neighborhoods but better off than origin neighborhoods.
9
All quotes from this point on, unless otherwise stated, are from Edin and co-authors’s qualitative study. See footnote 6 for
details.

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 Daily Routines

When exploring how adolescents in the MTO experiment spent their free time (after school, during weekends,
and in the summer), researchers found that male and female teenagers who remained in high-poverty neighbor-
hoods spent most of their leisure hours locally. But for teens living in neighborhoods with less poverty there were
notable differences in where girls and boys spent their free time. Girls in the treatment group were least likely to
be near their homes after school, preferring to visit friends and family in other neighborhoods, or going to malls
and movies—places with significant adult presence. In contrast, a majority of the boys in the treatment group re-
ported spending leisure time in their new neighborhoods, often playing sports in a nearby park or vacant lot, or
10
“hanging out” in groups near street corners.

Neighborhood Norms and Social Control

The study’s authors postulated that the differences in patterns of leisure activity between girls and boys could
have played a critical role in how teens adapted to their new neighborhoods. Both in Baltimore and Chicago, the
families in the MTO treatment group had relocated to areas with equally significant African-American populations,
but the neighborhoods were very different in terms of social class. Implicit norms of acceptable behavior in the
more affluent neighborhoods appeared to affect boys in the treatment group negatively. While the tendency of
boys to gather in groups and idle near street corners was unremarkable in their old neighborhoods, the same be-
havior often aroused suspicion and scrutiny among their new neighbors. Boys in the treatment group reported
more instances of police surveillance and harassment than boys in the control group. Roger, a sixteen-year-old boy
in the Chicago treatment group said “I was in the suburbs. There wasn’t nothing to do at all. Police always messing
with you. Talking about you doing this, you’re doing that.” Girls’ leisure activities like staying indoors or going to
the movies, on the other hand, were more in line with social expectations in the new neighborhoods.

In the in-depth interviews, boys in the treatment group were more likely than girls to be negative about their
new neighborhoods. Bart, a sixteen-year-old boy in Baltimore described his placement area as “just too quiet. I
don’t like a lot of quiet. I don’t like that.” Girls in the treatment group were more likely to be happy in their new
neighborhoods. Other qualitative research efforts in all MTO cities found that girls in the control group faced high
11
levels of sexual harassment and violence, strongly molding their preference to stay indoors. This could have con-
tributed to girls in the treatment group experiencing a greater sense of safety in neighborhoods with low poverty.

Neighborhood Navigational Strategies

Under the MTO demonstration, HUD required that families in the treatment group stay for at least one year in
their placement neighborhoods. When the study’s researchers conducted interviews in Baltimore and Chicago, six
to nine years after placement, many families had moved on to neighborhoods with more poverty.

10
These new neighborhoods were not necessarily the low-poverty neighborhoods.
11
Susan, J. Popkin, Laura E. Harris, Mary K. Cunnigham, “Families in Transition: A Qualitative Analysis of the MTO Experience,”
Urban Institute, 2002.

HKS Case Program 4 of 6 Case Number 2007.0

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 Analysis of the in-depth interviews presented another unexpected consequence of relocation. Over the years,
boys in the control group had acquired the skills to navigate neighborhoods where crime and drugs were rampant.
According to sixteen-year-old Scott in the Baltimore control group, “I know [the guys on those corners] but they
ain’t my friends. They [are into] drugs and loitering and stuff like I don’t really [do]. I mind my business.” Whereas
boys in the treatment group—having lived amidst low levels of crime during their formative years—did not need to
develop the same strategies. When families in the treatment group subsequently moved to poorer neighborhoods,
teen boys, unfamiliar with the contours of riskier street culture were ill equipped to handle the new challenges
they posed. The study’s authors noted that most of the boys in the treatment group “seemed caught in between
two competing sets of neighborhood norms—too ‘project’ for the low-poverty neighborhoods... but too ‘naïve’ for
the higher-poverty neighborhoods.”

Interaction with Neighborhood Peers

Another important aspect of social interaction—forging friendships—could also have contributed to the gap in
outcomes between MTO girls and boys. During the interviews, researchers asked adolescents in both the treat-
ment and control groups to describe their interactions with other teenagers in their current neighborhoods. Girls
and boys in the control group demonstrated equal caution in selecting friends near their homes, often staying
away from peers who were involved in “street drama,” like fighting or selling drugs. But girls and boys in the
treatment group adopted significantly varied strategies. Girls who had relocated to areas with less poverty pre-
ferred, in general, not to make friends in the neighborhood. Many chose to spend time with friends from school or
work. Boys in the treatment group were far more willing to befriend neighborhood teens, often without much
consideration for their friends’ potential to get into trouble.

Delinquency Among Friends

In conversations about friendships, researchers burrowed deeper, looking for signs of delinquent behavior like
criminal activity or substance abuse among close friends of MTO teens. Boys and girls in the control group were
equally likely to report having friends who were involved in illegal activities such as bringing a weapon to school or
being incarcerated. Boys in the treatment group were three times more likely than girls to associate with friends
involved in illegal activities, like drug trafficking. The study’s authors argued that “the same patterns of hanging out
learned in public housing not only brought unwanted… surveillance for the [treatment] boys but also seemed to
bring these boys into contact with the most troubled youths in their communities.”

Involvement of Social Fathers

Social science research had long established that adolescent behavior was closely tied to the presence of adult
role models. Among MTO teens, older role models (of the same gender) were often those who lived in their
households or visited frequently. For girls, the role models were typically their mothers. Boys were more likely to
report strong, caring relationships with a male who was not the biological father. Such father figures were often
members of family who lived in the neighborhood. Consequently, boys in the control group were twice as likely as
those in the treatment group to report having father figures. For boys in the treatment group, relocation removed
the benefits of proximity to father figures who could have acted as social support. According to Frederick, a fif-

HKS Case Program 5 of 6 Case Number 2007.0

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 teen- year-old boy in the Chicago treatment group, “you know, it was the projects but it still felt like home. I ain’t
got no problems because all the people that were around looked out for me, gave me some money when I needed
it.”

Long-Term Effects of Neighborhoods

Ultimately, the study established that “boys and girls from similar backgrounds lived in different social worlds
that created surprisingly different risks and opportunities.” Edin and co-authors believed similar research efforts
were needed to explore how social norms and interactions shaped the lives of MTO youth in adulthood.

HKS Case Program 6 of 6 Case Number 2007.0

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