American Economic Review Vol. 106 No. 4 2016

The Effects of Exposure to Better Neighborhoods on Children: New Evidence from the Moving to Opportunity Experiment

Raj Chetty¹; Nathaniel Hendren²; Lawrence F. Katz²

¹ Department of Economics, Stanford University, Landau 323, Stanford, CA 94305, and NBER (e-mail: ) · ² Department of Economics, Harvard University, Littauer Center, 1805 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, and NBER (e-mail: )

Abstract

The Moving to Opportunity (MTO) experiment offered randomly selected families housing vouchers to move from high-poverty housing projects to lower-poverty neighborhoods. We analyze MTO's impacts on children's long-term outcomes using tax data. We find that moving to a lower-poverty neighborhood when young (before age 13) increases college attendance and earnings and reduces single parenthood rates. Moving as an adolescent has slightly negative impacts, perhaps because of disruption effects. The decline in the gains from moving with the age when children move suggests that the duration of exposure to better environments during childhood is an important determinant of children’s long-term outcomes.

DOI

10.1257/aer.20150572

Volume

106

Issue

4

Pages

855-902

Language

en

Sources

openalex crossref bibtex:phds-export.bib

Cite

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