Neighborhood Effects on the Long-Term Well-Being of Low-Income Adults From All Five Sites of the Moving to Opportunity Experiment, 2008-2010 [Public Use Data] [electronic resource] Jens Ludwig, Greg J. Duncan, Lisa A. Gennetian, Lawrence R. Katz, Ronald Kessler, Jeffrey R. Kling, Lisa Sanbonmatsu

2013-03-14

Ann Arbor, Mich. Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor] 2013

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Nearly 9 million Americans live in extreme-poverty neighborhoods, places that also tend to be racially segregated and dangerous. Yet, the effects on the well-being of residents of moving out of such communities into less distressed areas remain uncertain. Moving to Opportunity (MTO) is a randomized housing experiment administered by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development that gave low-income families living in high-poverty areas in five cities the chance to move to lower-poverty areas. Families were randomly assigned to one of three groups: 1. The low-poverty voucher (LPV) group (also called the experimental group) received Section 8 rental assistance certificates or vouchers that they could use only in census tracts with 1990 poverty rates below 10 percent. The families received mobility counseling and help in leasing a new unit. One year after relocating, families could use their voucher to move again if they wished, without any special constraints on location. 2. The traditional voucher (TRV) group (also called the Section 8 group) received regular Section 8 certificates or vouchers that they could use anywhere; these families received no special mobility counseling. 3. The control group received no certificates or vouchers through MTO, but continued to be eligible for project-based housing assistance and whatever other social programs and services to which they would otherwise be entitled. Families were tracked from baseline (1994-1998) through the long-term evaluation survey fielding period (2008-2010) with the purpose of determining the effects of "neighborhood" on participating families. These particular files include data from the 3,273 adult interviews completed as part of the MTO long-term evaluation and are comprised of variables analyzed for the article "Neighborhood Effects on the Long-Term Well-Being of Low-Income Adults" that was published in the journal Science on September 21, 2012. Using data from the long-term evaluation, the article reports that moving from a high-poverty to lower-poverty neighborhood leads to long-term (10- to 15-year) improvements in adult physical and mental health and subjective well-being, despite not affecting economic self-sufficiency. Subjective well-being is more strongly affected by changes in neighborhood economic disadvantage than racial segregation, which is important because racial segregation has been declining since 1970, but income segregation has been increasing. The files submitted here contain all outcomes and mediators analyzed for the article as well as a variety of demographic and other baseline measures that were controlled for in the analysis. Cf: http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR34563.v2

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June 17, 2019

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