How Remaking the Neighborhood Could Boost Poor Kids’ Futures

1990s initiative to replace housing projects with mixed-income developments gave children economic lift as adults, research finds

By Justin Lahart of The WSJ. Excerpts:

"The Harvard University economist [Raj Chetty] and his co-authors have documented how poor kids in some neighborhoods can grow up to earn far more than others who grow up just blocks away. The difference: When poor kids move to thriving neighborhoods, they have more social connections and proximity to kids from higher-income families, and their economic futures improve."

"In the waning days of George H.W. Bush’s presidency, Congress appropriated funding to remake deteriorating public-housing projects."

"It demolished distressed high-rises, and used a combination of public and private funds to replace them with a mix of market-rate and subsidized units arranged in low-rise homes and townhouses."

"The economists then turned to what HOPE VI did for kids."

"At age 30, those who had lived in HOPE VI housing earned 16% more than those who had lived in traditional housing projects. The HOPE VI kids were 17% more likely to attend college. Boys were 20% less likely to be incarcerated as adults."

But [there might be] "differences between the families who moved into HOPE VI housing and the families the research compares them with that the economists couldn’t completely control for"

"One thing the research did to address such concerns was to look at siblings who moved into HOPE VI housing. They found that younger children, who spent more of their childhoods in the new housing, tended to do better as adults than their older brothers and sisters."