September 20, 2012Science
Neighborhood Effects on the Long-Term Well-Being of Low-Income Adults
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Implication
Randomized trial reveals moving to lower-poverty neighborhoods improves long-term health and well-being in low-income adults, indicating economic environment drives quality of life.
Key Points
- To determine whether moving from high-poverty to lower-poverty neighborhoods produces long-term improvements in adult health, well-being, and economic self-sufficiency.
- Analyzed long-term follow-up data (10- to 15-year duration) from the Moving to Opportunity randomized housing mobility experiment.
- Evaluated outcomes across adult physical health, mental health, subjective well-being, and economic self-sufficiency relative to neighborhood poverty and racial segregation.
- Moving to lower-poverty neighborhoods produced 10- to 15-year improvements in adult physical health, mental health, and subjective well-being, but did not affect economic self-sufficiency.
- A 1-standard deviation reduction in neighborhood poverty (13 percentage points) increased subjective well-being by an effect equivalent to a $13,000 difference in annual income (control group average income was $20,000).
- Subjective well-being was more strongly associated with reductions in neighborhood economic disadvantage than with changes in racial segregation.
Cite This Study
Ludwig et al. (2012) studied this question.