Does a Neighborhood’s Neighbors Matter? Spatial Lag Effects on Urban Neighborhood Economic Mobility or Stability

Claudia Solari, Abt Associates

Recent work on neighborhood economic segregation and mobility in the U.S. reveals increasing neighborhood income inequality within cities.Research points to a rising prevalence of poor neighborhoods and falling median neighborhood income among poor neighborhoods during the 2000s, in the face of the Great Recession. This drop in income among poor neighborhoods came in combination with higher rates of neighborhood change, suggesting a greater vulnerability among neighborhoods at the bottom of the income distribution to fall into poverty. Affluent neighborhoods experienced a similar increase in instability during the 2000s, such that neighborhoods at the top of the income distribution were fluctuating in and out of affluence at a higher rate than in previous decades. This analysis enhances prior research by incorporating spatial methods to better understand neighborhood change or mobility and neighborhood stability within U.S. cities before and after the Great Recession.