Transitions from Childhood

Transitions in Childhood

Literacy

Family and Work

Early Childhood

Neighborhoods

• Neighborhoods and Children:
  Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN)

Contacts:
Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Ph.D., (Scientific Director), and Tama Leventhal,Ph.D., Center for Children and Families, Teachers College, Columbia University; Felton Earls, M.D., (Principal Investigator) Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Public Health.  

Funders:
John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, National Institute of Justice, and National Institute of Mental Health. 

Timeline: Data collection began in 1994 and is scheduled to continue until 2003.

Summary:
This project was designed to study the origins and developmental pathways of social competence and antisocial behavior from birth through young adulthood within a variety of communities.  A major focus of the study is to elucidate the effects of community and neighborhood contexts on individual behavior.  The project is comprised of several components, including a longitudinal study and a community survey.  The longitudinal study employs an accelerated, longitudinal design with seven cohorts: 0, 3, 6, 9, 12, 15 and 18.  Each cohort is comprised of 700 to 1000 children, and they are being followed annually for at least five years.  The focus on multiple contexts of development led to a sophisticated neighborhood-based sampling frame in which a stratified probability sample of 80 neighborhood clusters that vary in terms of SES and ethnic racial/ethnic mix was drawn.  The community survey used a similar sampling procedure, but almost 9000 respondents were interviewed in over 300 neighborhood clusters (20-50 per cluster). 

For both studies, interviews and assessments are conducted in the home. Extensive information on neighborhoods is being collected. In addition to census data, videotapes of neighborhoods are being collected and coded as part of the community survey.  Participants' ratings of neighborhoods will come from the community survey, and interviewers are conducting systematic social observations of respondents' neighborhoods in the longitudinal study.  Data from local agencies, including crime reports from police departments, information on abuse and neglect from child protective services, and information on childcare supply and demand, is also being obtained. Families' responses to changes in welfare requirements will be charted as well.

• The Neighborhoods They Live In
  Poverty: Context and Consequences for Children

Contacts:
Jeanne Brooks‑Gunn, Ph.D., Center for Children and Families, Teachers College, Columbia University; Greg Duncan, Ph.D., Joint Center for Poverty Research, Northwestern University.

Funders:
March of Dimes Foundation, Foundation for Child Development, Russell Sage Foundation, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Network on Child and Family Well-Being, Social Science Research Council Committee on the Underclass, and Rockefeller Foundation.

Timeline: 1980 decennial census data appended to IHDP data (at birth, age 3, and age 5), PSID data, and NLSY data.

Summary:
Three datasets (Infant Health and Development Program, Panel Study of Infant Dynamics, National Longitudinal Study of Youth) are used to analyze the effects of family and neighborhood level poverty for maternal characteristics and behavior at age 3 and for children's cognitive and behavioral development at ages 3 and 5 (IHDP and NLSY data) and for out‑of‑wedlock birth and high school dropping out (PSID data).  Controlling for the effects of family poverty, child health status (birth weight, neonatal health), race, gender, maternal education, age, and headship status, significant effects are found for neighborhood poverty.  The presence of affluent neighbors was associated with better child cognitive outcomes at ages 3 and 5 and with adolescent outcomes (teenage birth and school leaving).  However, the presence of poor neighbors was associated with less warmth and a worse physical environment of the home at age 3.  Family income was also associated with maternal and child outcomes at ages 3 and 5 and adolescent outcomes, and across different datasets.

• Moving to Opportunity Experiment: Effects of Residential Change on New York City Children and Their Families

Contacts:
Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Ph.D., and Tama Leventhal, Ph.D., Center for Children and Families, Teachers College, Columbia University; J. Phillip Thompson, Ph.D., Barnard College, Columbia University; Thomas Cook, Ph.D., and Greg J. Duncan, Ph.D., Joint Center for Poverty Research, Northwestern University; Robert L. Crain, Ph.D., Teachers College, Columbia University.

Funders: Russell Sage Foundation and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Timeline:
Data collection began in the fall of 1998 and is scheduled to continue until the Spring of 1999.

Summary:
In response to the Gautreaux project, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development employed a randomized design in five of the nation's largest cities.  MTO randomly assigned housing-project residents (families with children) to: (i) an experimental or treatment group who received Section 8 housing vouchers and special assistance to move to low-poverty neighborhoods; (ii) a control group who received conven­tional Section 8 housing vouchers and no special assistance and moving requirements; and (iii) a second control group who received no vouchers or special assistance. We are conducting in-home interviews with approximately 800 families in the New York MTO with children ages 3 to 18, approximately three years after they have moved. Of importance are the ways in which neighborhood resources and family resources intersect to provide or impede opportunities for families.  Also of interest is how neighborhoods offer, in some circumstances, social networks that operate as support systems, resource referrals, job channels, childcare, and surveillance systems for mothers. 

Moves to new neighborhoods may disrupt some of these networks and at the same time offer opportunities to build new ones.  Other issues to be examined include how families initially adapt to moving and the types of problems families and youth experience as a result of the move.  We are particularly interested in the specific strategies for coping employed by individual families and youth during the initial phase of the move and how these short-term strategies for coping with the move and events in the family, school, peer, and job contexts influence subsequent experiences as well as decisions about remaining in the community.

• The Yonkers Family and Community Project

Contacts:
Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Ph.D., Center for Children and Families, Teachers College, Columbia University; Robert L. Crain, Ph.D., Teachers College, Columbia University.

Funders: National Science Foundation.

Timeline: Data collection will begin in late 1997 and is scheduled to continue until 1999.

Summary:
The overall goal of this study is to examine the impact of neighborhood change -- moving from high poverty, predominately minority neighborhoods into more affluent neighborhoods -- on low-income parents and their children.  Following a federal court order to remedy long-standing racial segregation in public housing and in schools (U.S. vs. City of Yonkers, et al., 1985), the city of Yonkers built 200 units of low-rise public housing in mostly white, middle-income neighborhoods.  Subsequently, a group of very low-income, mostly African American and Latino families moved into the housing between 1992 and 1994. 

We are conducting a 2-year follow-up of the 317 African American and Latino families (both those who moved to new neighborhoods and those who stayed in the old neighborhoods) of Yonkers, who have been interviewed previously at baseline.  The 2-year follow-up will focus on families’ short-term adaptation to their new neighborhoods.  The specific aims are: (i) to assess neighborhood effects by comparing the 184 families who moved (the "mover" families) with the 149 families who stayed (the "stayer" families) in their low-income, mostly minority neighborhoods, on key outcomes, including education, job attainment, job stability, parenting, family functioning, and health status; (ii) to compare mover children (1-12) and youth (13-17) with stayer children and youth on key outcomes, including school achievement, juvenile delinquency, school engagement, peer networks, and employment; (iii) to compare effects of moving to a new neighborhood on children with those on youth, so as to assess the significance of developmental stage for neighborhood effects; (iv) to compare effects on sub-groups of movers, based on clearly defined traits (e.g., tenure in new housing); (v) to assess effects of the physical design and location of the scattered-site housing -- "inward" vs. "outward" -- on behavior and outcomes; and (vi) to explore the effects of a racially desegregated neighborhood on the school preferences (e.g., academic vs. vocational) and the peer group formation of mover children and youth.

• The Neighborhoods They Live In: Community Approaches to the Provision of Services

Contacts:
Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Ph.D. and Tama Leventhal, Ph.D., Center for Children and Families, Teachers College, Columbia University.

Funders:
Social Science Research Council, Foundation for Child Development, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Network on Child and Family Well-being, and Russell Sage Foundation.

Summary:
Our work focuses on insights gained from several recent endeavors that have sought to address concerns about the growing number low-income children and families residing in poor, urban neighborhoods and strategies for delivering services to these families.  We have tried to identify different definitions of community and the resultant implications of each for the provision of services to low-income, urban children and their families.  The four different approaches to defining communities include -- (i) communities as place; (ii) communities as face; (iii) communities as space; and (iv) communities as the integration of place, face, and space.  When communities are defined as place, they are conceived of as neighborhoods (geographical locales) and bureaucratically defined units.  Employing a place-based definition of community has two main implications for the provision of services to urban children -- categorical programs and system reform.  Viewing communities as face, emphasizes the psychological associations that residents have within their community; the community is comprised of relationships and social supports.  This definition in terms of policy translates into the integration of services provided to children and families as well as communities (i.e., family and community support services), representing a more holistic and child-focused approach than service reform.  The third definition, communities as space, views communities as physical and built environments for living, working, and political organizing.  This definition has been employed by community development corporations and initiatives such as the Empowerment and Enterprise Zones whose main target has been housing and economic development.  The final strategy for delivering services to poor, urban children and their families -- comprehensive community initiatives (CCIs) -- takes the broadest approach by viewing communities as the integration of place, face, and space.  CCIs are comprehensive, community-based multiservice organizations.

• MacArthur Foundation's Network on Successful Midlife Development (MIDMAC)

Contacts:
Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Ph.D., and Tama Leventhal, Ph.D., Center for Children and Families, Teachers College, Columbia University; Diane Hughes, Ph.D., New York University; David Featherman, Ph.D., Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan     

Funders: MacArthur Foundation and the Foundation for Child Development.

Timeline: A majority of the data collection was completed in 1995.

Summary:
MIDMAC is a of study midlife development.  This two‑site study (Chicago and New York) was undertaken as part of a national study on midlife development (Midlife Development Inventory; MIDI) in order to focus on ethnic and racial minorities, who would be under‑represented in the national investigation. MIDMAC incorporated measures of neighborhood ethnic heterogeneity and neighborhood SES into the design.  The study examined ethnic and racial minorities that resided in neighborhoods that varied in terms of high and low SES and high and low ethnic integration.  For ethnic integration, low concentration of a particular racial/ethnic group ranged from ten percent to twenty percent and high concentration of a particular group ranged from fifty percent to seventy percent.   In Chicago, the ethnic groups examined were Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans, and in New York, the groups were African Americans, Dominican Americans, and Puerto Ricans.  Primary outcomes of interest in this study are physical and mental health status and social responsibility.  Our group will be focusing on parenting and SES gradients of health.