2000115-Strengthening-Communities-with-Neighborhood-Data

348 Strengthening Communities with Neighborhood Data
were strongest for children who had lived in their neighborhoods for
three years or more, suggesting either a lagged and/or cumulative effect
process. Kauppinen (2007) observed little impact of neighbors’ social
status on type of secondary school chosen unless the students were in
the neighborhood two or more years. Sampson et al. (2008) examined
reading abilities of black children who grew up in Chicago at three later
points in their lives. Their findings indicated that there was a cumulative,
durable penalty from extended childhood residence in neighborhoods
with concentrations of low socioeconomic–status households that grew
stronger after several years of residence in such places. Finally, Musterd,
Galster, and Andersson (2012) investigated the effect of neighborhood
income mix on individuals’ earnings. They found important temporal
dimensions in the statistical effect of neighborhood income mix: Recent,
continued, or cumulative exposure yielded stronger associations than
lagged, temporary ones, and there was a distinct time decay (though
some persistence) in the potential effects after exposure ceased (though
with some gender differences).
Finally, we want to raise the possibility that residential mobility itself
could be affected by neighborhood effect mechanisms in the same way
as other behaviors or outcomes. Following neighborhood effect theory,
there is no reason to believe that externality effects on preferences, aspirations,
norms and values, and subjective perceptions of possible outcomes
should not include preferences and perceptions about individuals’ own
and other neighborhoods, as well as about mobility in general, nor that
any opportunity structure should not affect opportunities in terms of
if and where to move. Exogenous and correlated effects are already tested
to some extent, although studies have not made this explicit claim. The
white flight theory describes how exogenous characteristics of others
affect moves; subjective neighborhood evaluations can be seen as a result
of public services, location, and neighborhood characteristics associated
with correlated mechanisms; and neighborhood reputation and stigmatization
are closely related. Vartanian, Walker Buck, and Gleason (2007)
have also tested place socialization theory when showing that children
growing up in poverty areas are more likely than others to live in such
areas as adults, all else being equal.
To sum up this section, considerable research shows that several
aspects of neighborhood context can produce nontrivial independent
effects on a variety of outcomes for resident children, youth, and adults,
although the impacts may be observed only after certain threshold values