Families and Neighbors as Sources of Disadvantage in the Schooling Decisions of White and Black Adolescents

The effects of neighborhood and family characteristics on completed schooling are estimated with nationally representative longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. Consistent with theories of beneficial institutions and collective socialization, the presence of affluent neighbors appears to confer benefits on white males and on both white and black females, even after family-level factors such as parental income, maternal education, and family structure have been controlled for. Other neighborhood effects were more specialized but did not, in general, support the hypothesis that economically disadvantaged adolescents were especially vulnerable to either the positive or negative influences of neighborhoods. The racial composition of neighborhoods appeared to affect black but not white children. Family-level characteristics such as maternal education and family income were consistently important across all race and sex subgroups and were more powerful than any of the neighborhood characteristics.