Movin' On Up or Just Movin'? Residential Mobility and Attainment among U.S. Adolescents

• In Event: 563 - Section on Community and Urban Sociology Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 05. Residential Mobility, Immobility, and Displacement

Abstract

An extensive body of research documents strong associations between both residential mobility and exposure to disadvantaged neighborhoods and a variety of adverse outcomes for children, many of which are particularly relevant for adolescents. Yet curiously, few prior studies have examined the factors that lead to either residential mobility or specific types of moves among families with teenagers, such as those in which teens and their families move from highly disadvantaged neighborhoods to relatively affluent ones. The paper presents preliminary findings from an analysis of data from the restricted-use version the National Educational Longitudinal Study (N ≈ 13,020) and the 1990 Census. The analysis examines the correlates of residential mobility generally and of downward, lateral and upward residential moves in particular among a nationally representative sample of adolescents who were in 8th grade in 1988. Results estimated with Heckman ordered probit models that adjust for sample selection suggest that patterns of residential mobility among teenagers and their families tend to reproduce and even exacerbate place-based inequalities associated with family socieconomic status and race/ethnicity. However, at least one potentially important difference emerges in these results as compared to what prior studies have found for US households generally and families with children in the specific cities. Specifically, the analysis produces no evidence of white (or Latino) flight from neighborhoods with relatively high proportions of black residents among teenagers and their families.

Authors

• Marcus L. Britton, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

• Pat Rubio Goldsmith, Texas A&M University

• William Velez, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee