The Effects Of Exposure To Better Neighborhoods On Children
Raj Chetty, Nathaniel Hendren, and Lawrence F. Katz, Harvard University and NBER
18 May, 2015
ABSTRACT: The Moving to Opportunity (MTO) experiment offered randomly selected families living in high poverty housing projects housing vouchers to move to lower-poverty neighborhoods. We present new evidence on the impacts of MTO on children’s long-term outcomes using administrative data from tax returns.
We find that moving to a lower-poverty neighborhood significantly improves college attendance rates and earnings for children who were young (below age 13) when their families moved. These children also live in better neighborhoods themselves as adults and are less likely to become single parents.
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