The Oz Behind the Curtain: Cross-National Comparison of the Neighborhood Level Mechanisms Impacting Socioeconomic Mobility

• In Event: 127 - Section on Community and Urban Sociology Paper Session. Neighborhood/Residential Inequalities

Abstract

Over the last century, urban sociologists in the United States have repeatedly demonstrated that a neighborhood environment impacts socioeconomic opportunities. That is, residents in economically and racially marginalized neighborhoods are more likely to remain poor over multiple generations than their counterparts in middle income or racially dominant communities. Yet, the debate continues as to what exactly is causing this so called “neighborhood effect” and if it only exists in the United States context. Pulling from the last 100 years of urban sociological theory, this study isolates four distinct neighborhood mechanisms—institutional resources, human capital, spatial form and social prestige—and utilizes geo-coded longitudinal panel study data from both the United States and Germany to examine if these mechanisms impact the socioeconomic status of residents over the life course. This research finds that a neighborhood’s human capital impacts residents’ income, education, and employment in the United States and Germany. In the United States, institutional resources impacts residents’ income and institutional resources and social prestige impact educational attainment. Spatial form is not related to any of the socioeconomic measures in either country. Thus, this research suggest that the so called “neighborhood effect” is present in both the United States and Germany but is primarily the impact of human capital not racial demographics, institutional resources or the spatial form.

Author

• Junia Lee Howell, Rice University