Suburban Spillover: An Analysis of Gentrification Exposure and the Socioeconomic Composition of Schools

• In Event: Resident to Student Displacement: Examining Gentrification’s School Enrollment Implications in 21st-Century Los Angeles County

Abstract

In recent decades, gentrification has changed the composition of neighborhoods, communities, and schools (Lees et al., 2008). While some students may benefit from the effects of gentrification through increased resources and positive peer influences, students from low-income backgrounds are often displaced from their homes and schools due to high living costs (Holme, 2022). Alongside the return of residents from high socioeconomic backgrounds to cities, researchers have also observed dramatic rises in suburban poverty and the racial diversification of suburbs (Lewis-McCoy et al., 2023). However, there is limited research exploring the impacts of gentrification on the suburbanization of poverty and the changing demographics of schools outside the urban core (Hochstenbach & Musterd, 2021; Diamond et al., 2021; Pearman, 2021).

This study aims to contribute to the existing research on gentrification and schooling by asking two research questions. First, how does gentrification exposure in metropolitan areas influence the socioeconomic composition of schools? Second, how do changes in school socioeconomic composition vary across locale classifications?

To answer these questions, this study analyzes approximately 56,000 schools across 118 metropolitan areas, combining demographic and geographic data from schools, neighborhood poverty estimates, and gentrification indicators at the metropolitan area level. Specifically, I use the Urban Institute’s Model Estimates of Poverty in Schools (MEPS), a new measure of economic background, to estimate changes in school poverty concentrations between 2009 and 2019 (Gutierrez et al., 2022). I also leverage multiple sets of American Community Survey five-year estimates on household income, educational attainment, housing value, rent prices, and racial composition to estimate a single continuous measure of gentrification exposure using principal component analysis. To understand how the influence of gentrification exposure on school poverty concentrations may vary within metropolitan areas, I analyze the interaction terms between gentrification exposure and locale type. The regression model includes controls for baseline neighborhood poverty rates and school racial composition, and the standard errors are clustered at the metropolitan-area level.

Preliminary results suggest that, on average, increased exposure to gentrification was associated with increased concentrations of low-income students in all major locale classifications outside the urban core. Compared to schools in city locales, I estimate that a 1 standard deviation increase in gentrification exposure was associated with a 0.39 percentage point increase in the poverty concentration of suburban schools, a 1.57 percentage point increase in town schools, and a 0.92 percentage point increase in rural schools.

This study adds to the existing literature on gentrification, education, and suburban inequality as one of the first empirical projects that investigates the influence of gentrification beyond urban schools. By providing further evidence that supports the suburbanization of poverty thesis, this study suggests a possible reason for rising poverty rates in schools located outside the urban core of metropolitan areas.

Author

• Kenton Shimozaki, Vanderbilt University