Assessing Neighborhood Racial Segregation and Macroeconomic Effects in the Education of African Americans

Abstract

The "underclass" debate of the 1980s often concerned the relative importance of neighborhood racial and economic isolation to the educational challenges facing many African Americans. This review organizes the neighborhood effects research that has emerged since that time according to these differing perspectives. The review's triangulated approach assesses (a) the association of a neighborhood's racial segregation and low level of economic resources to less academic success, (b) whether certain neighborhood social processes lower children's educational performance, and (c) if residential opportunity leads to improvements in educational performance after children leave impoverished and segregated neighborhoods for integrated and middle-class areas. The analysis reveals that the education of African Americans appears less affected by neighborhood conditions than the two perspectives suggest, at least as they are currently conceptualized and measured. The results are contextualized with the author's identification of areas in the field where more research is needed, the problems and promise associated with particular analytical strategies, and other social, school-based, and human development dynamics that complicate the estimation of neighborhood influences in education.

The Price of the Ticket: Health Costs of Upward Mobility among African Americans

“…High levels of racial residential segregation reduce the availability and quality of resources, including access to social capital [57][58][59][60]. Segregation also means that Black Americans often must leave their social networks in order to pursue upward social mobility.…”

The association between neighbourhoods and educational achievement, a systematic review and meta-analysis

“…Several reviews have attempted to summarise the literature about neighbourhood effects on educational outcomes, providing insight into the importance of neighbourhoods, the mechanisms by which neighbourhoods exert their influence, and the methodologies that can be used in this field. However, these reviews were conducted for specific subsamples (Johnson 2010 ), do not quantify their results (Dietz 2002 ; Leventhal and Brooks-Gunn 2000 ), or are dated (Jencks and Mayer 1990 ). Despite their significant value, such studies cannot explain the great diversity of results found in this field.…”

“College Material” Structural Care at a New York City Transfer School

“…The literature on marginalized student populations and retention demonstrates that dropout rates are highest among black and Latino/a students with low socioeconomic status [19][20][21][22][23][24]. This persistent inequality is due to unequal distributions of resources across schools with disparate race and class compositions [25][26][27].…”