Katherine M. O'Regan

Spatial Effects Upon Employment Outcomes: The Case of New Jersey Teenagers

Theories about the importance of space in urban labor markets have emphasized the role of employment access, on the one hand, and neighborhood composition, on the other hand, in affecting employment outcomes. This paper presents an empirical analysis which considers both of these factors, together with individual human capital characteristics and household attributes in affecting youth employment. The analysis is based upon an unusually rich sample of micro data on youth in four New Jersey metropolitan areas. The empirical analysis is based on a sample of some 28,000 at home youth, matched to detailed census tract demographic information and specially constructed measures of employment access. The research includes a comparison of the importance of neighborhood and access in affecting youth employment when individual and household attributes are also measured. The results demonstrate the overall importance of these spatial factors (particularly neighborhood composition) in affecting youth employment in urban areas.

Teenage Employment and the Spatial Isolation of Minority and Poverty Households

Using micro data from the US Census, this paper tests the importance of the spatial isolation of minority and poverty households for youth employment in the largest US metropolitan areas. We first estimate a model relating youth employment probabilities to individual and family characteristics, race, and metropolitan location. We then investigate the determinants of the systematic differences in employment probabilities by race and metropolitan area. We find that a substantial fraction of differences in youth employment can be attributed to the isolation of minorities and poor households. Minority youth residing in cities in which minorities are more segregated or in which minorities have less contact with non-poor household have lower employment probabilities than otherwise identical youth living in similar but less segregated metropolitan areas. Simulations suggest that the magnitude of these spatial effects is not small. It may explain a substantial fraction of the existing differences in youth employment rates for white, black, and hispanic youth.

Reversal of Fortunes? Lower-income Urban Neighbourhoods in the US in the 1990s

This paper offers new empirical evidence about the prospects of lower-income, US urban neighbourhoods during the 1990s. Using the Neighborhood Change Database, which offers a balanced panel of census tracts with consistent boundaries from 1970 to 2000 for all metropolitan areas in the US, evidence is found of a significant shift in the fortunes of lower-income, urban neighbourhoods during the 1990s. There was a notable increase in the 1990s in the proportion of lower-income and poor neighbourhoods experiencing a gain in economic status. Secondly, in terms of geographical patterns, it is found that this upgrading occurred throughout the country, not just in selected regions or cities. Finally, it is found that the determinants of changes in lower-income, urban neighbourhoods shifted during the 1990s. In contrast to earlier decades, both the share of Blacks and the poverty rate were positively related to subsequent economic gain in these neighbourhoods during the 1990s.

The effect of social networks and concentrated poverty on black and hispanic youth unemployment

This paper examines empirically the effect of spatially concentrated poverty on minority youth employment and the role of “access” in youth labor markets. A model, in which information about jobs travels through social networks, links labor market outcomes and residential concentration of poverty. The empirical work uses U.S. Census employment data for the largest MSAs, in 1970 and 1980. The key findings are that, although concentration appears to have had no effect on black youth unemployment in 1970, the results for 1980 support “concentration effects” on unemployment for both black and hispanic youth. These effects are sizeable on average, and quite large in some cities.

American murder mystery revisited: do housing voucher households cause crime?

Potential neighbors often express worries that Housing Choice Voucher holders heighten crime. Yet, no research systematically examines the link between the presence of voucher holders in a neighborhood and crime. Our article aims to do just this, using longitudinal, neighborhood-level crime, and voucher utilization data in 10 large US cities. We test whether the presence of additional voucher holders leads to elevated crime, controlling for neighborhood fixed effects, time-varying neighborhood characteristics, and trends in the broader sub-city area in which the neighborhood is located. In brief, crime tends to be higher in census tracts with more voucher households, but that positive relationship becomes insignificant after we control for unobserved differences across census tracts and falls further when we control for trends in the broader area. We find far more evidence for an alternative causal story; voucher use in a neighborhood tends to increase in tracts that have seen increases in crime, suggesting that voucher holders tend to move into neighborhoods where crime is elevated.

What Can We Learn About the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Program by Looking at the Tenants?

Using tenant-level data from 18 states that represent almost 40% of all Low-Income Housing Tax Credit units, this article examines tenant incomes, rental assistance, and rent burdens to shed light on key questions about our largest federal supply-side affordable housing program. Specifically, what are the incomes of the tenants, and does this program reach those with extremely low incomes? What rent burdens are experienced, and is economic diversity within developments achieved? We find that approximately 45% of tenants have extremely low incomes, and the overwhelming majority of such tenants also receive some form of rental assistance. Rent burdens are lower than that for renters with similar incomes nationally but generally higher than that presumed for housing programs of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Rent burdens vary greatly by income level and are lowered by the sizable share of owners who charge below federal maximum rents. Finally, we find evidence of both economically diverse developments and those with concentrations of households with extremely low incomes.

The low income housing tax credit and racial segregation

This paper addresses a critical but almost unexamined aspect of the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program – whether its use (and in particular, the siting of developments in high-poverty/high-minority neighborhoods), is associated with increased racial segregation in the metropolitan area. Using data from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Census, supplemented with data on the racial composition of LIHTC tenants in three states, we examine three potential channels through which the LIHTC could affect segregation: where LIHTC units are built relative to where other low income households live, who lives in these tax credit developments, and changes in neighborhood racial composition in neighborhoods that receive tax credit projects. The evidence on each of these channels suggests that LIHTC projects do not contribute to increased segregation, even those in high poverty neighborhoods. We find that increases in the use of tax credits are associated with declines in racial segregation at the metropolitan level.

Crime and U.S. Cities: Recent Patterns and Implications

Crime fell substantially in the United States between the early 1990s and 2005. This article examines the size and nature of crime reductions that occurred in cities and their surrounding suburbs and identifies the characteristics of cities experiencing greater declines. The authors then explore two questions: how these changes altered existing disparities in safety (or exposure to crime) among particular groups and the extent to which these reductions increased the relative attractiveness of cities and ultimately led to city growth. The authors find that reductions in crime contributed to the ability of cities to retain households that might otherwise have moved to the suburbs, although the measurable impact on overall city growth is modest at best. Additionally, reductions in crime clearly changed the geography of crime and dramatically reshaped differential exposure to crime among demographic groups. At the city and neighborhood level, the authors find that the distribution of crime reductions was highly “progressive,” disproportionately benefiting historically disadvantaged groups.

WELCOME TO THE NEIGHBORHOOD: HOW CAN REGIONAL SCIENCE CONTRIBUTE TO THE STUDY OF NEIGHBORHOODS?

We argue in this paper that neighborhoods are highly relevant for the types of issues at the heart of regional science. First, residential and economic activity takes place in particular locations, and particular neighborhoods. Many attributes of those neighborhood environments matter for this activity, from the physical amenities, to the quality of the public and private services received. Second, those neighborhoods vary in their placement in the larger region and this broader arrangement of neighborhoods is particularly important for location choices, commuting behavior and travel patterns. Third, sorting across these neighborhoods by race and income may well matter for educational and labor market outcomes, important components of a regions overall economic activity. For each of these areas we suggest a series of unanswered questions that would benefit from more attention. Focused on neighborhood characteristics themselves, there are important gaps in our understanding of how neighborhoods change – the causes and the consequences. In terms of the overall pattern of neighborhoods and resulting commuting patterns, this connects directly to current concerns about environmental sustainability and there is much need for research relevant to policy makers. And in terms of segregation and sorting across neighborhoods, work is needed on better spatial measures. In addition, housing market causes and consequences for local economic activity are under researched. We expand on each of these, finishing with some suggestions on how newly available data, with improved spatial identifiers, may enable regional scientists to answer some of these research questions.

USING BIRTH WEIGHTS TO CHART THE SPATIAL DISTRIBUTION OF URBAN POVERTY

Investigation of the dynamic geography of urban poverty is complicated by the shortage of data on household situations at the neighbothood level. This paper suggests that institutional data on poverty-related factors such as welfare receipt, unemployment, school-leaving, and crime be used for such study. The approach is illustrated by studying the changing geographic incidence of low birth weights and homicides in Oakland, California.