The Legacy of Multigenerational Disadvantage

The theory underlying a multigenerational perspective argues that there are numerous possible pathways, observed and unobserved, by which the neighborhood environment in one generation may be linked with a child's cognitive ability in the next generation. A family's exposure to neighborhood poverty over two consecutive generations is found to reduce the average child's cognitive ability by more than half a standard deviation. If childhood neighborhoods affect any dimension of adult social or economic status, health, or family life, then disadvantages experienced during childhood in one generation may linger and affect cognitive ability in the next. The chapter considers the experimental and quasi-experimental evidence available from residential mobility programs, including the Gautreaux program in Chicago, the Moving to Opportunity experiment, and other similar programs. It also considers the extensive literature on neighborhood effects based on observational data. A common claim made in reviews of these studies is that the family environment is more important for child development than the neighborhood environment.