American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that racial segregation is crucial to explaining the emergence of the urban underclass during the 1970s and that a strong interaction between rising rates of poverty and high levels of residential segregation explains where, why and in which groups the underclass arose.
Abstract: This article argues that racial segregation is crucial to explaining the emergence of the urban underclass during the 1970s. A strong interaction between rising rates of poverty and high levels of residential segregation explains where, why and in which groups the underclass arose. This argument is developed with simulations that replicate the economic conditions observed among blacks and whites in metropolitan areas during the 1970s but assume different conditions of racial and class segregation. These data show how a simple increase in the rate of minority poverty leads to a dramatic rise in the concentration of poverty when it occurs within a racially segregated city. Increases in poverty concentration are, in turn, associated with other changes in the socioeconomic character of neighborhoods, transforming them into physically deteriorated areas of high crime, poor schools, and excessive mortality where welfare-dependent, female-headed families are the norm. Thus, policies to solve the socioeconomic pr...
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TL;DR: Multilevel analyses showed that a measure of collective efficacy yields a high between-neighborhood reliability and is negatively associated with variations in violence, when individual-level characteristics, measurement error, and prior violence are controlled.
Abstract: It is hypothesized that collective efficacy, defined as social cohesion among neighbors combined with their willingness to intervene on behalf of the common good, is linked to reduced violence. This hypothesis was tested on a 1995 survey of 8782 residents of 343 neighborhoods in Chicago, Illinois. Multilevel analyses showed that a measure of collective efficacy yields a high between-neighborhood reliability and is negatively associated with variations in violence, when individual-level characteristics, measurement error, and prior violence are controlled. Associations of concentrated disadvantage and residential instability with violence are largely mediated by collective efficacy.
10,498 citations
TL;DR: Findings underscore the need for research efforts to identify the complex ways in which economic and non-economic forms of discrimination relate to each other and combine with socio-economic position and other risk factors and resources to affect health.
Abstract: This article examines the extent to which racial differences in socio-economic status (SES), social class and acute and chronic indicators of perceived discrimination, as well as general measures of stress can account for black-white differences in self-reported measures of physical and mental health. The observed racial differences in health were markedly reduced when adjusted for education and especially income. However, both perceived discrimination and more traditional measures of stress are related to health and play an incremental role in accounting for differences between the races in health status. These findings underscore the need for research efforts to identify the complex ways in which economic and non-economic forms of discrimination relate to each other and combine with socio-economic position and other risk factors and resources to affect health.
3,541 citations
TL;DR: This article provides a comprehensive review of research on the effects of neighborhood residence on child and adolescent well-being and suggests the importance of high socioeconomic status for achievement and low SES and residential instability for behavioral/emotional outcomes.
Abstract: This article provides a comprehensive review of research on the effects of neighborhood residence on child and adolescent well-being. The first section reviews key methodological issues. The following section considers links between neighborhood characteristics and child outcomes and suggests the importance of high socioeconomic status (SES) for achievement and low SES and residential instability for behavioral/emotional outcomes. The third section identifies 3 pathways (institutional resources, relationships, and norms/collective efficacy) through which neighborhoods might influence development, and which represent an extension of models identified by C. Jencks and S. Mayer (1990) and R. J. Sampson (1992). The models provide a theoretical base for studying neighborhood mechanisms and specify different levels (individual, family, school, peer, community) at which processes may operate. Implications for an emerging developmental framework for research on neighborhoods are discussed. Social science concerns about the effects of residence in a poor neighborhood on children and youth date back more than 50 years to the publication of Shaw and McKay's (1942) Juvenile Delinquency and Urban Areas. Historical accounts of the effects of living in a poor neighborhood date back even further. The current interest in neighborhood effects on, children and youth has multiple origins. First, Wilson's (1987) documentation of increasingly concentrated poverty in urban areas at the neighborhood level during the 1970s and 1980s served to reorient discussions of poverty from the individual to the neighborhood level. Second, and related to the work of Wilson, was the rejuvenated interest among sociologists and urban scholars in community social disorganization theory (Shaw & McKay, 1942) as an explanatory model for delinquency and crime, as well as other problem behaviors encountered in many poor urban neighborhoods (see, e.g., Bursik, 1988; Kornhauser, 1978; Sampson, 1992; Sampson & Groves, 1989; see Sampson & Morenoff, 1997, for a review). Social disorganization theory posits that neighborhood structural factors, such as poverty, residential instability, single parenthood, and ethnic heterogeneity, are of prime importance in explaining behavior through their ability to thwart or promote neighborhood organization (formal and informal institutions), which maintains public order. Other scholars, although not necessarily focusing on child wellbeing, drew attention to residential (or spacial) patterns as sources
3,303 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors review evidence that suggests that segregation is a primary cause of racial differences in socioeconomic status (SES) by determining access to education and employment opportunities, and conclude that effective efforts to eliminate racial disparities in health must seriously confront segregation and its pervasive consequences.
Abstract: Racial residential segregation is a fundamental cause of racial disparities in health. The physical separation of the races by enforced residence in certain areas is an institutional mechanism of racism that was designed to protect whites from social interaction with blacks. Despite the absence of supportive legal statutes, the degree of residential segregation remains extremely high for most African Americans in the United States. The authors review evidence that suggests that segregation is a primary cause of racial differences in socioeconomic status (SES) by determining access to education and employment opportunities. SES in turn remains a fundamental cause of racial differences in health. Segregation also creates conditions inimical to health in the social and physical environment. The authors conclude that effective efforts to eliminate racial disparities in health must seriously confront segregation and its pervasive consequences.
2,027 citations
TL;DR: The authors examined variations in intergenerational closure, reciprocal local exchange, and shared expectations for informal social control across 342 neighborhoods in Chicago and found that residential stability and concentrated affluence, more so than poverty and racial/ethnic composition, predict intergeneration closure and reciprocal exchange, while concentrated disadvantage is associated with sharply lower expectations for shared child control.
Abstract: We propose a theoretical framework on the structural sources and spatially embedded nature of three mechanisms that produce collective efficacy for children. Using survey data collected in 1995 from 8,782 Chicago residents, we examine variations in intergenerational closure, reciprocal local exchange, and shared expectations for informal social control across 342 neighborhoods. Adjusting for respondents' attributes, we assess the effects of neighborhood characteristics measured in the 1990 census and the role of spatial interdependence. The results show that residential stability and concentrated affluence, more so than poverty and racial/ethnic composition, predict intergenerational closure and reciprocal exchange. Concentrated disadvantage, by contrast, is associated with sharply lower expectations for shared child control. The importance of spatial dynamics in generating collective efficacy for children is highlighted-proximity to areas high in closure, exchange, and control bestows an advantage above and beyond the structural characteristics of a given neighborhood. Moreover, spatial advantages are much more likely to accrue to white neighborhoods than to black neighborhoods
1,989 citations