The Legacy of Multigenerational Disadvantage

Research on the relationship between neighborhoods and child development has frequently overlooked a crucial dimension of neighborhood stratification: time. Whereas much research on the impact of neighborhoods implicitly treats the environment as a static feature of a child’s life and assumes that the neighborhood has instantaneous effects on children, a life course perspective on neighborhood inequality shifts attention toward continuity and change in the environment over time and across generations and considers the role that neighborhoods play in altering or structuring individuals’ or families’ trajectories.