The Effects of Exposure to Better Neighborhoods on Children: New Evidence from the Moving to Opportunity Experiment

Raj Chetty, Nathaniel Hendren and Lawrence Katz

Scholarly Articles from Harvard University Department of Economics

Abstract: The Moving to Opportunity (MTO) experiment offered randomly selected families housing vouchers to move from high-poverty housing projects to lower-poverty neighborhoods. We analyze MTO's impacts on children's long-term outcomes using tax data. We find that moving to a lower-poverty neighborhood when young (before age 13) increases college attendance and earnings and reduces single parenthood rates. Moving as an adolescent has slightly negative impacts, perhaps because of disruption effects. The decline in the gains from moving with the age when children move suggests that the duration of exposure to better environments during childhood is an important determinant of children's long-term outcomes.

Date: 2016
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (732)

Published in American Economic Review

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http://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/30367426/46646672.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The Effects of Exposure to Better Neighborhoods on Children: New Evidence from the Moving to Opportunity Experiment (2016)
Working Paper: The Effects of Exposure to Better Neighborhoods on Children: New Evidence from the Moving to Opportunity Experiment (2015)
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