James E. Rosenbaum

Changing the Geography of Opportunity by Expanding Residential Choice: Lessons from the Gautreaux Program

Abstract The concept of “geography of opportunity” suggests that where individuals live affects their opportunities. While multivariate analyses cannot control completely for individual self‐selection to neighborhoods, this article examines a residential integration program—the Gautreaux program—in which low‐income blacks are randomly assigned to middle‐income white suburbs or low‐income mostly black urban areas. Compared with urban movers, adult suburban movers experience higher employment but no different wages or hours worked, and suburban mover youth do better on several educational measures and, if not in college, are more likely to have jobs with good pay and benefits. The two groups of youth are equally likely to interact with peers, but suburban movers are much more likely to interact with whites and only slightly less likely to interact with blacks. The article considers how attrition might affect the observations and speculates about the programs strengths and pitfalls.

Tournament Mobility: Career Patterns in a Corporation.

The data were put in manageable order by David Bruces proficient programming, and the manuscript was improved by the comments of Chris Argyris, Donald Black, Scott Boorman, Burton Clark, Richard Hackman, Rosabeth Kanter, Melvin Kohn, W. Russell Neuman, Lee Rainwater, Albert J. Reiss, Frank Romo, and Barry Seltser to an earlier draft. Preparation of this paper was supported by the Manpower Administration, U.S. Department of Labor. Of course, the views presented here are those of the author.

Black pioneers—do their moves to the suburbs increase economic opportunity for mothers and children?

Abstract This paper examines whether housing vouchers help poor people improve their education and employment. The Gautreaux program uses housing certificates and counseling to help poor people move to white suburbs and to black urban areas. The people who move to suburbs face different opportunities and challenges than those moving within the city, so it is not certain which group will have better employment and education. We find that compared with city movers, the adult suburban movers have greatly improved employment, even after controls, but they have no different pay or hours worked. Among children, suburban movers are more likely than city movers to be (1) in school, (2) in college‐track programs, (3) in four‐year colleges, (4) in jobs, (5) in better‐paying jobs, and (6) in jobs with benefits. Just by moving people and without providing additional services, this program has uncovered capabilities of these low‐income people that were not evident in the city. Policy implications of this program are c...

How Do Places Matter? The Geography of Opportunity, Self-efficacy and a Look Inside the Black Box of Residential Mobility

The culture of poverty model implies that low-income individuals who acquired a low sense of efficacy will retain it, while the geography of opportunity model implies that that they will change if their opportunities improve. The Gautreaux Program moves low-income black families to the city or suburbs in a quasi-random procedure. Participants who moved to higher SES neighbourhoods had higher efficacy and felt safer, which mediated the neighbourhood effects on efficacy. This paper examines which experiences participants identify as having an influence on their sense of efficacy, and the ways those experiences have these effects.

Fifteen Years Later: Can Residential Mobility Programs Provide a Long-Term Escape From Neighborhood Segregation, Crime, and Poverty?

We examined whether the Gautreaux residential mobility program, which moved poor black volunteer families who were living in inner-city Chicago into more-affluent and integrated neighborhoods, produced long-run improvements in the neighborhood environments of the participants. We found that although all the participants moved in the 6 to 22 years since their initial placements, they continued to reside in neighborhoods with income levels that matched those of their placement neighborhoods. Families who were placed in higher-income, mostly white neighborhoods were currently living in the most-affluent neighborhoods. Families who were placed in lower-crime and suburban locations were most likely to reside in low-crime neighborhoods years later.

From High School to Work: Market and Institutional Mechanisms in Japan

Market models posit that institutional linkages interfere with efficient labor markets. Many Japanese high schools have agreements with employers to hire their students, and this article examines the ties between Japanese schools and employers, the reasons they make these ties, and the criteria they use to select students. Interviews with teachers and recruiters indicate that the Japanese system shifts the competition for jobs from the labor market into schools and among schools, and employers also compete for dependable sources of labor. Multivariate analyses of surveys of 1,408 high schools and 964 seniors indicate that desirable jobs are allocated more on the basis of academic than nonacademic criteria, contrary to the predictions of some models. Moreover, contrary to a hypothesis that institutional linkages reduce achievement effects, achievement has greater effects on jobs with linked employers than on jobs with nonlinked employers. Institutional linkages differ from both economic market models and from sociological personal network models, and they have practical and theoretical implications for understanding the relationship between education and work.

Pathways into work: Short- and long-term effects of personal and institutional ties

Although youths are often confined in jobs that allow minimal gains in earnings, the AA. used quantitative data to examine whether any kinds of job contact allow youths to get jobs that lead to later higher earnings and use qualitative data to illustrate school job contacts and the ways they can help disadvantaged groups. Analyzing data from High School and Beyond, the AA. found that most types of contacts have little effect on early earnings, but relatives and school contacts place students in jobs that lead to higher earnings nine years later (at age 28). Blacks, young women, and high-achieving youths less often get their jobs from relatives but more often get jobs through school contacts. The findings indicate the theoretical importance of social contacts and previously overlooked ways that high schools improve the work-entry process for youths, especially blacks and females

The Social Prerequisites of Success: Can College Structure Reduce the Need for Social Know-How?

A study of fourteen colleges finds that community colleges require certain kinds of social know-how—skills and knowledge less available to disadvantaged students. They present seven obstacles: (1) bureaucratic hurdles, (2) confusing choices, (3) student-initiated guidance, (4) limited counselor availability, (5) poor advice from staff, (6) delayed detection of costly mistakes, and (7) poor handling of conflicting demands. However, we find that a very different kind of college—the private occupational college—takes steps to structure out the need for this social know-how and address the needs of disadvantaged students. We speculate about possible policy implications.

The Education and Employment of Low-Income Black Youth in White Suburbs.

This study examines education and employment outcomes of Black youth whose families moved from mostly Black urban housing projects to either mostly White suburbs or other mostly Black urban areas. The study examined high school retention, grades, track placement, college attendance, employment, wages, job prestige, and job benefits. Despite concerns about disadvantages due to discrimination and competition with White peers, the suburban youth did significantly better than urban youth in practically all areas. In the suburbs, mothers and youth pointed to positive effects of higher educational standards, additional academic help, greater access to information about college enrollment, and positive role models.

Lake Parc Place: A study of mixed‐income housing

Abstract Stimulated by Wilsons contentions in The Truly Disadvantaged about the deleterious consequences of concentrated poverty, policy makers have considered various ways of creating mixed‐income communities. Lake Parc Place is a bold effort to create mixed‐income housing in buildings that were formerly a traditional low‐income housing project and that are still owned by the Chicago Housing Authority. Low rents and promises of safety have attracted a sufficient number of “nonproject” residents to fill half the units at Lake Parc Place. This article examines whether these residents feel safe and satisfied, and whether they interact and form friendships with neighbors, get involved in volunteer activities at Lake Parc Place, and support rule enforcement. We present findings from a large survey of Lake Parc Place residents and from in‐depth interviews with a subset of the survey sample. We find that Lake Parc Place accomplished the prerequisites for making mixed‐income housing into a community.