Unraveling the tangle of pathology: The effect of spatially concentrated joblessness on the well-being of African Americans

In this paper we use the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to construct a series of event history files that follow young black men and women as they age year by year from 15 to 30. Given a person′s individual, family, and neighborhood characteristics in year t, we predict the odds of various outcomes in year t + 1: getting a job and going to jail for males, and getting married and having a teenage birth for females. Our key predictor from a theoretical viewpoint is the percentage of jobless males in the respondent′s census tract. Controlling for various socioeconomic characteristics of the individual and family, we find that this factor has a strong effect in predicting the odds of various problematic socioeconomic outcomes. Young African American men who live in neighborhoods of concentrated male joblessness are significantly more likely to be jobless themselves. Likewise, black women who live in areas where jobless men predominate are considerably less likely to get married, but this factor does not affect the odds of teenage childbearing.