Abstract
Although discussions of poor neighborhoods often assume that their residents are a distinct population trapped in impoverished environments for long durations, no past research has examined longitudinal patterns of residence in poor neighborhoods beyond single-year transitions. Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics from 1979 to 1990 matched to census tract data, this paper provides the first estimates of duration of stay and rates of re-entry in poor (20%+ poor) and extremely poor (40%+ poor) census tracts. The results indicate that (1) there is great racial inequality in longitudinal patterns of exposure to poorneighborhoods – mostAfrican Americans will live in a poor neighborhood over a 10 year span, contrasted to only 10 percent of whites; (2) exits from high poverty neighborhoods are not uncommon, but re-entries to poor neighborhoods following an exit are also very common, especially among African Americans; and (3) length of spell in a poor neighborhood is positively associated with low income, female headship, and, most of all, black race. Little of the racial difference is accounted for by racial difference in poverty status or family structure. Implications for research and public policy are discussed.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Anderson, E. (1990), Streetwise: Race, class, and change in an urban community. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Bane, M.J. & Ellwood, D. (1983), The dynamics of dependence: Routes to self-sufficiency. Report prepared for Office of Income Security Policy, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (June).
Bane, M.J. & Ellwood, D. (1986), Slipping into and out of poverty: The dynamics of spells, The Journal of Human Resources 21(1): 1–23.
Brooks-Gunn, J., Duncan, G.J., Kato, P. & Sealand, N. (1993), Do neighborhood influence child and adolescent behavior? American Journal of Sociology 99: 353–395.
Brooks-Gunn, J., Duncan, G.J. & Aber, J.L. (eds.) (1997), Neighborhood poverty vol 1. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
Cooke, T. (1999), Geographic context and concentrated urban poverty within the United States, Urban Geography 20(6): 552–566.
Coulton, C., Chow, J., Wang, E. & Su, M. (1996), Geographic concentration of affluence and poverty in 100 metropolitan areas, 1990, Urban Affairs Review 32(2): 186–216.
DaVanzo, J.S. & Morrison, P.A. (1981), Return and other sequences of migration in the United States, Demography 18(1): 85–101.
Earls, F. (2000), Urban poverty: Scientific and ethical considerations, Annals of the American Association of Political and Social Science 572: 53–65.
Furstenberg, F.F. (1993), How families manage risk and opportunity in dangerous neighborhoods, pp. 231–258 inW.J. Wilson (ed.), Sociology and the Public Agenda. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.
Furstenberg, F.F., Cook, T., Eccles, J., Elder, G. & Sameroff, A. (1999), Managing to make it: Urban families and adolescent success. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Geis, K.J. & Ross, C.E. (1998), A new look at urban alienation: The effect of neighborhood disorder on perceived powerlessness, Social Psychology Quarterly 61: 232–246.
Goldstein, S. (1954), Repeated mobility as a factor in high mobility rates, American Sociological Review 19(5): 536–541.
Gramlich, E., Laren, D. & Sealand, N. (1992), Moving into and out of poor urban areas, The Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 11(2): 273–287.
Hill, M.S. (1992), The Panel Study of Income Dynamics: A user's guide. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
Jargowsky, P. & Bane, M.J. (1991), Ghetto poverty in the United States, 1970–1980, pp. 235–273 in C. Jencks and P.E. Peterson, (eds.), The urban underclass. Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution.
Jargowsky, P. (1997a), Poverty and place: Ghettos, barrios, and the American city. NewYork: Russell Sage.
Jargowsky, P. (1997b), Metropolitan restructuring and urban policy, Stanford Law and Policy Review 8(2): 47–60.
Kasarda, J. (1993), Inner-city concentrated poverty and neighborhood distress, 1970 to 1990, Housing Policy Debate 4: 253–302.
Kotlowitz, A. (1991), There are no children here: The story of two boys growing up in the other America. New York: Anchor Books.
Krivo, L. & Peterson, R. (1996), Extremely disadvantaged neighborhoods and urban crime, Social Forces 75(2): 619–650.
Lamison-White, L. (1995), Poverty areas in the United States. U.S. Bureau of the Census, statistical brief 95–13. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office.
Land, K. (1969), Duration of residence and prospective migration: Further evidence, Demography 6: 133–140.
Leventhal, T. & Brooks-Gunn, J. (2000), The neighborhoods they live in: The effects of neighborhood residence on child and adolescent outcomes, Psychological Bulletin 126(2): 309–337.
Lee, B., Oropesa, R.S. & Kanan, J.W. (1994), Neighborhood context and residential mobility, Demography 31(2): 249–266.
Ludwig, J., Duncan, G. & Hirschfeld, P. (2001), Urban poverty and juvenile crime: Evidence from a randomized housing-mobility experiment, Quarterly Journal of Economics 655–679.
Massey, D.S. & Denton, N. (1993), American apartheid: Segregation and the making of the underclass. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Massey, D.S., Gross, A. & Shibuya, K. (1994), Migration, segregation, and the geographic concentration of poverty, American Sociological Review 59(3): 425–445.
Morrison, P.A. (1971), Chronic movers and the future redistribution of population in the United States, Demography 8 (2): 171–184.
Polikoff, A. (ed.) (1995), Housing mobility: Promise or illusion? Washington, D.C.: The Urban Institute.
Quillian, L. (1999), Migration patterns and the growth of high-poverty neighborhoods, 1970–1990, American Journal of Sociology 105(1): 1–37.
Rank, M.R. & Hirschl, T. (1988), A rural-urban comparison of welfare exits: the importance of population density, Rural Sociology 53: 190–206.
Ross, C.E., Reynolds, J. & Geis, K. (2000), The contingent meaning of neighborhood stability for residents’ psychological well-being, American Sociological Review 65: 581–587.
Sasieni, P. (1998), An adaptive variable span running line smoother, Stata Technical Bulletin 41: 4–7.
Silverman, B.W. (1985), Some aspects of the spline smoothing approach to nonparametric regression curve fitting (with discussion), Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B 47: 1–52.
Solon, G. (2000), Correlations between neighboring children in their subsequent educational attainment, The Review of Economics and Statistics 82(3): 383–392.
South, S.J. & Crowder, K.D. (1997), Escaping distressed neighborhoods: Individual, community, and metropolitan influences, American Journal of Sociology 102(4): 1040–1084.
Speare, A., Goldstein, S. & Frey, W.H. (1975), Residential mobility, migration, and metropolitan change. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger.
StataCorp. (1999), Stata statistical software: Release 6.0. College Station, TX: Stata Corporation.
Stevens, A.H. (1999), Climbing out of poverty, falling back in: Measuring the persistence of poverty over multiple spells, The Journal of Human Resources 34(3): 557–589.
Strait, J.B. (2000), An examination of extreme urban poverty: The effect of metropolitan employment and demographic dynamics, Urban Geography 21(6): 514–542.
Sucoff, C. & Upchurch, D. (1998), Neighborhood context and the risk of childbearing among metropolitan-area black adolescents, American Sociological Review 63: 571–85.
Turley, R.L. (2003), When do neighborhoods matter? The role of race and neighborhood peers, Social Science Research 32(1): 62–79.
White, M.J. (1987), American neighborhoods and residential differentiation. New York: Russell Sage.
Wilson, W.J. (1987), The truly disadvantaged: The inner city, the underclass, and public policy. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Wilson, W.J. (1991), Studying inner-city social dislocations: The challenge of public agenda research, American Sociological Review 56(February): 1–14.
Wilson, W.J. (1996), When work disappears: The world of the new urban poor. New York: Knopf.
Wolf, D.A. (1988), The multistate lifetable with duration-dependence, Mathematical Population Studies 1(3): 217–245.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Quillian, L. How Long are Exposures to Poor Neighborhoods? The Long-Term Dynamics of Entry and Exit from Poor Neighborhoods. Population Research and Policy Review 22, 221–249 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1026077008571
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1026077008571