Selecting for Safety: A Qualitative Meta-analysis of Residential Mobility out of High-crime Neighborhoods

• In Event: 095 - Section on Community and Urban Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 17. Policing and Crime

Abstract

In this article we argue that social environments such as high crime neighborhoods disrupt motivation. To support this argument, we first review the neighborhood crime literature, with attention to theories about how high-crime environments affect distal outcomes. We then examine literature on motivation and hypothesize that because the need to survive precedes the need to thrive in the sequence of human motivation, neighborhood conditions of violence direct individual behavior to meet this primary need. Moreover, studies have established that people in high poverty neighborhoods who select into housing mobility programs cite violence as primary motivations for wanting to make a residential move. Finally, we conduct a qualitative meta-analysis and incorporate descriptions from households across the country who sought to make residential moves through housing mobility programs. These participants describe how the need for safety in three neighborhood settings, 1) block level dynamics, 2) interactions in the neighborhood and 3) school environments.

We find that because high rates of crime threaten residents’ basic needs for safety and security, neighborhood conditions of violence alter motivation by activating the need to escape violence. Placed in the language of the counterfactual, safety is a primary human need and neighborhood threats to safety lead individuals to direct their behavior toward meeting the need to escape crime and violence. If that same person had never been exposed to high rates of crime and, consequently had her needs to be safe and secure met, she could direct her behavior toward pursuing opportunity.

Author

• Erin Graves, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston