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Neighborhood Safety and Moving to Opportunity: Understanding Gender and Life Course Differences Using a Mixed-Methods Approach Author: Anita L. Zuberi Dissertation School: Northwestern University Pages: 161 Publication Date: June 2009 Availability: Access Number: 10877 Abstract: High rates of crime and violence in public housing developments over the past two decades led to a dramatic shift in housing policy for low-income families. High-rise public housing developments were demolished and replaced with low-density mixed-income communities, forcing thousands of families to relocate into the private market. Underlying these changes is the notion that neighborhood disadvantage causes negative outcomes for children. The three empirical studies of this dissertation examine this relationship. The first two studies use data from the experimental Moving To Opportunity (MTO) program to estimate the impacts of an offer to move from high- to low-poverty neighborhoods on neighborhood danger exposure for children and mothers. Models based on sibling comparisons show that MTO had a more beneficial impact on exposure to drug activity for girls than boys. Models based on mother-child comparisons revealed that the moves provided greater declines for mothers’ perceptions of neighborhood danger than it did for their children, but smaller impact differences on exposure to drug activity between mothers and daughters than mothers and sons. These results suggest that impacts on drug exposure contributed to mental health and behavioral impacts. The second study also explores how neighborhood danger exposure translates into perceptions of safety using qualitative in-depth interviews conducted with a subsample of families in MTO. There is a relationship between low danger exposure and perceived safety, but many youth and mothers also report feeling safe despite danger exposure. Findings suggest that the volume, violence, and social connection associated with the danger, as well as access to protective social ties are important factors in this relationship. The third study uses data from the nationally representative child development supplement of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to examine the relationship between parents’ perceptions of neighborhood safety and parental monitoring behaviors. Controlling for child, family, and objective neighborhood characteristics reveals associations between high social cohesion and parental monitoring and low-quality neighborhood ratings and parental monitoring through rules. However, these relationships disappear in the change models. Parents also have less knowledge and rules for older children, and are more cognizant of daughters' than sons' whereabouts. |
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