2000115-Strengthening-Communities-with-Neighborhood-Data

170 Strengthening Communities with Neighborhood Data
The Making Connections surveys have been the basis for many
research products. 20 Many of the completed products show how conditions
changed in these neighborhoods over the survey period. One
important report, for example, presented data on how the wealth of lowincome
neighborhood families shifted before and after the onset of the
Great Recession (Hendey, McKernan, and Woo 2012). 21
Two strands of the Making Connections findings on the process of
neighborhood change fundamentally altered our understanding of the
way neighborhood indicators and performance measures need to be
examined. The first and most important concerns residential mobility.
Coulton, Theodos, and Turner (2009) found a high rate of residential
mobility in Making Connections neighborhoods; 61 percent of the families
with children interviewed in the wave 1 survey had moved by wave 2.
This translates into an annual mobility rate of 28 percent (Kingsley,
Jordan, and Traynor 2012).
The idea of high mobility disturbs community developers working to
build social capital in neighborhoods. Although research showing higher
mobility rates for low-income groups compared with households with
higher incomes has been available for some time, 22 the fact has not been
much discussed in the community development literature. The Making
Connections research, however, performed for an initiative whose central
purpose was community improvement, seems to be gaining wider
recognition in that field. Kubisch et al. (2010, 140), for instance, states
“[t]he next generation of community change efforts must take up the
challenge of developing good theories of change that reflect this new
understanding of . . . mobility dynamics.”
Actually, the real news from the Making Connections research was not
about the overall extent of mobility, but about its composition. Coulton,
Theodos, and Turner (2009) performed a cluster analysis that divided
the family household movers into three groups:
• Up and out moves (30 percent of all movers). Households with
fairly high incomes (median $28,000) who sought a better home
or neighborhood. They moved the longest distances (median
5.8 miles) and were generally satisfied and optimistic about their
new neighborhoods.
• Nearby attached movers (25 percent of movers). Households with
much lower incomes (median $15,000) who typically moved a
short distance (median 1.1 miles). Their moves were more often