"Over the last decade, Raj Chetty and his colleagues have found when disadvantaged kids move to better neighborhoods, they end up doing dramatically better later in life. But the reality is that many low-income families can't or won't move to better neighborhoods. And so the researchers wondered, basically, what if instead of moving disadvantaged kids to better neighborhoods, policymakers can move better neighborhoods to disadvantaged kids?"
"Under the program, the government funded the demolition of the nation's most distressed public housing projects, and then it redeveloped them to create less dense and more mixed-income neighborhoods. Many families were displaced, but the ones that remained found themselves in a transformed, more economically integrated neighborhood, and it created a sort of real-world experiment for the researchers to study."
A federal program in the 1990s funded demolition of the nation’s most distressed public housing projects and redeveloped them into less dense, mixed-income neighborhoods. Many families were displaced, but remaining residents lived in transformed, more economically integrated neighborhoods. Because many low-income families cannot or will not move to better neighborhoods, policymakers pursued revitalization as an alternative to relocation. Adults experienced limited measurable gains, while children raised in revitalized neighborhoods had substantially better life outcomes, including higher college attendance and lower incarceration rates. Each additional year spent being raised in a revitalized neighborhood correlated with higher earnings later in life.
Read at www.npr.org
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