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Neighbourhood effects on educational attainment. What matters more: Exposure to poverty or exposure to affluence? [1]

['Agata A. Troost', 'Department Of Urbanism', 'Faculty Of Architecture', 'The Built Environment', 'Delft University Of Technology', 'Delft', 'The Netherlands', 'Maarten Van Ham', 'David J. Manley', 'School Of Geographical Sciences']

Date: 2023-05

Neighbourhood effects studies typically investigate the negative effects on individual outcomes of living in areas with concentrated poverty. The literature rarely pays attention to the potential beneficial effects of living in areas with concentrated affluence. This poverty paradigm might hinder our understanding of spatial context effects. Our paper uses individual geocoded data from the Netherlands to compare the effects of exposure to neighbourhood affluence and poverty on educational attainment within the same statistical models. Using bespoke neighbourhoods, we create individual neighbourhood histories which allow us to distinguish exposure effects from early childhood and adolescence. We follow an entire cohort born in 1995 and we measure their educational level in 2018. The results show that, in the Netherlands, neighbourhood affluence has a stronger effect on educational attainment than neighbourhood poverty for all the time periods studied. Additionally, interactions with parental education indicate that children with higher educated parents are not affected by neighbourhood poverty. These results highlight the need for more studies on the effects of concentrated affluence and can inspire anti-segregation policies.

Funding: The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council ( https://erc.europa.eu/ ) under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007-2013) / ERC Grant Agreement n. 615159 (ERC Consolidator Grant DEPRIVEDHOODS, Socio-spatial inequality, deprived neighbourhoods, and neighbourhood effects; awarded to M. v. H.), as well as from European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme ( https://wayback.archive-it.org/12090/20220124075100/https:/ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/ ) under Grant Agreement n. 727097 (RELOCAL; awarded to M. v. H.). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

This study investigates the effects of exposure to neighbourhood affluence and neighbourhood poverty on educational attainment, using data from the Netherlands. Although by international standards Dutch cities are only moderately economically segregated, there is evidence of growing socioeconomic inequality in recent years [ 23 ], as well as isolated elite spatial contexts, created by rich households seeking to further accumulate their capital [ 24 ]. Moreover, the Dutch educational system is highly stratified and shows a growing dependency on students’ socioeconomic background [ 25 ]. In our study we use longitudinal register data, which enable us to follow the 1995 birth cohort and construct neighbourhood histories from birth to age 18, and measure educational outcomes at age 23. We study the effects of exposure to affluence and poverty at different stages of development: early childhood (ages 0 to 12), adolescence (13 to 17) and the entire childhood (0 to 17). The measures of neighbourhood poverty and affluence are created from bespoke neighbourhoods based on the nearest 200 households. Following earlier studies [ 20 ], we also test if the exposure to the neighbourhood context (both affluence and poverty) is different for children with different parental levels of education. We find that, in all models, neighbourhood affluence has a stronger effect on educational attainment than neighbourhood poverty. Additionally, interactions with parental education indicate that children with higher educated parents are not affected by neighbourhood poverty.

There is a small number of studies that have demonstrated the significant influence of elite or affluent spatial contexts on various life outcomes in Europe [ 4 , 12 – 16 ] and in North America [ 17 – 19 ]. Amongst the important findings from these papers is that well-off and more highly educated neighbours can transfer their social and cultural capital through shared social networks formed within the neighbourhood. This is of particular importance for children’s educational outcomes, considering that richer and more highly educated neighbours not only promote ambitious social attitudes (attending university to access high paying jobs as a norm), as well as invest in local community initiatives out of interest in the wellbeing of their own offspring [ 20 ]. Wealthier residents are likely to set higher standards for extracurricular activities for local children, spending time and resources on activities related to sport or culture. Through participating in such activities, children and teenagers not only expand their objective skills and knowledge, but also learn social codes which can be important for accessing affluent settings [ 21 ]. Evidence from the Netherlands also suggests that homogenous high-income neighbourhoods exhibit more local solidarity behaviours than poorer or mixed-income neighbourhoods [ 22 ].

To ameliorate negative neighbourhood effects, policy has often focused on the social renewal of poor neighbourhoods through relocating poor and introducing more affluent households–a policy without substantial empirical support [ 9 ]. The need to focus on tackling concentrated poverty while neglecting the spatial concentration of richer households has likely contributed to that limited policy approach [ 10 ]. Ultimately, the overwhelming focus on “fixing” poverty could, in part, be the result of researchers adopting theories based on individual social actors’ attributes rather than on a more dynamic view of society, in which upper social classes manage their resources through mechanisms of exploitation and exclusion (see the overview of social inequality theories in [ 11 ]).

Few studies have specifically investigated the effects of living in affluent neighbourhoods on individual outcomes [ 4 ], despite repeated calls to do so since the 1990s [ 5 , 6 ]. The lack of literature on concentrated affluence is even more striking given the influential position of affluent households: the choices of the wealthy largely shape patterns of socio-economic segregation in cities, as higher income households can use their resources to select the best residential locations in a city [ 7 ]. By using their wealth, richer residents are able to [re]produce spatial inequalities, including the inequalities arising from both positive and negative neighbourhood effects [ 8 ].

The current interest in the economic impacts of neighbourhood effects was ignited by W.J. Wilson’s book The Truly Disadvantaged [ 1 ]. The field has been dominated by a “poverty paradigm” ever since [ 2 ] as studies on a wide range of individual outcomes focussed almost exclusively on the presumed negative effects of living in poverty concentration neighbourhoods. The research focus on poorer neighbourhoods is understandable, as these are the places where a variety of problems accumulate and restrict individual life chances. Moreover, poor neighbourhoods are highly relevant from the perspective of public policy interventions aimed at reducing poverty and related problems. However, focusing solely on the negative effects of spatially concentrated poverty may hinder our understanding of the role of spatial context effects in individual life courses. Studying the effects of living in areas with concentrated affluence could help us to better understand how inequalities arise. After all, the Matthew effect suggests that not only do the “poor get poorer”, but also that the “rich get richer” [ 3 ].

Theoretical background

The spatial influence of affluence The neighbourhood context can influence educational outcomes of a child, similarly to the effect of parental and school factors, with which neighbourhood factors often interact [12]. The literature focusses mostly on social mechanisms [26] in the neighbourhood, including social interactions, which are based on physical proximity. The benefits of affluence for the quality of the built environment and facilities such as libraries, or schools, are clear–richer parents will have more resources to invest in their community, which they first carefully chose according to their preferences [27]. However, the social networks formed in the neighbourhood, which can be of high importance for children’s future [4, 15], are also affected by the wealth of local inhabitants. Much of the neighbourhood effects literature uses the theory of resource transmission through local networks, which in turn is based on Bourdieu’s concepts of social and cultural capital [28]. By knowing certain types of people (social capital), individuals gain access to valuable information about schools or jobs, as well as adopt certain habits and ways of expression which lead to being accepted by those in charge of school or job admission (cultural capital). Yet even when individuals are in possession of these skills and attitudes, these paths may remain untrodden if, for example, they do not perceive attending a university as a realistic option for their future. These socially inspired possibilities are covered by the concept of habitus [29]. The life choices individuals make must fit in within their habitus, which is formed by those with whom they are interacting [30]. As individuals imitate others during their socialisation, the way they perceive the world and their place within it is shaped by their socioeconomic background. The habitus of a social class influences children’s attitude to institutions [31]: the poorer parents, family members and classmates are unable to mobilise the same degree of social and cultural capital while dealing with authorities as richer ones. Households reproduce neighbourhood characteristics by choosing neighbourhoods with people who are like themselves, and this is partly driven by their choice of housing and the neighbourhoods in which it is available [32]. Even if they are not consciously aware of social mechanisms, resourceful parents are likely to choose a neighbourhood as affluent as possible and contribute to preserving or enhancing that status [4]. Such behaviour is rationalised as a desire to provide their children with a safe environment and protect from possible disorder in other neighbourhoods rather than to seek the positive effect of affluent ones [33]. For children, a safe environment is important because they spend time with their peers outside both in early childhood and in adolescence, playing sports and games. Unsupervised play outside is less prevalent among richer children, but still present [34]. For a child from a poorer household, becoming part of a social network with children from more affluent households can result in peer effects overriding the educational and vocational preferences of their own parents [4]. Shared behaviours, such as studying together (potentially supervised or assisted by higher educated parents) or refraining from skipping class, contribute further to educational success. Parents themselves may also be affected by the parenting attitudes in the neighbourhood [20]. Neighbourhood networks are often connected to other networks, for example when local children are encouraged to join clubs playing higher status sports such as field hockey or tennis [34]. Ultimately, a transmission of resources takes place in richer neighbourhoods, and children from poorer households can benefit from residing in such places.

Neighbourhood poverty in European context Poorer neighbourhoods are not only deprived of resources, but also must deal with a wide range of consequences of poverty, including higher crime rates or the social isolation of migrant groups. Many studies of neighbourhood context influencing educational attainment from the US have focused on such spatial disorder, with participants expressing the stress caused by presence of organised crime or drug trade [35, 36]. However, these issues are less prevalent in the more egalitarian European societies [37], with higher government spending on welfare [38]. There are also differences between Northern American and European urban planning, with European cities being more “urban”–denser, with well-developed public transit networks–while many American cities are characterised by extensive, car-oriented, suburbs [38]. Even if Western European cities have also experienced suburbanisation during the last decades [39], their more compact nature should result in lower spatial isolation experienced by their inhabitants. Furthermore, cities in the US have been expanding due to international migration, a phenomenon which remains much slower in Western Europe [38]. The large influx of new inhabitants from abroad may make social cohesion in American cities more difficult to achieve. These differences between European and American cities might be a reason for caution in using US studies as inspiration for research on European data. The strong focus on poverty could be one of such trends. Even if American authors have long been calling for a greater focus on affluence [5, 6], most of the US research and public attention goes to deprived neighbourhoods [2]. Based on the practical reality of relatively egalitarian Western European cities, we assume that in the Netherlands, the lack of higher educated, affluent neighbours could be more important than the overall impact of poverty. This assumption is further supported by the few studies from European countries which show that the influence of neighbourhood affluence on various outcomes can be stronger than that of neighbourhood poverty [13, 14]. While comparing the effects of affluence and poverty, it is important to highlight that one is not simply the inverse of the other. As already discussed, poverty is often associated with crime and isolation of minority groups [35, 36]. Furthermore, the accumulation of different types of capital characteristic for affluence could progress at very different rates than the negative effects of poverty, which can also accumulate (for example, having debts can lead to difficulties in finding an affordable mortgage). There are studies which not only show that the effect of one could be stronger than the other, but also that there can be a significant effect of concentrated affluence on health while concentrated poverty has no effect at all [19]. Affluence and poverty can also interact differently with individual characteristics. This lack of symmetry is an argument for including them both in empirical models, as well as measuring them as distinct and separate factors to capture all of their influence. There are also theoretical reasons for studying poverty together with affluence, while using the Weberian-inspired conceptualisations of social and cultural capital, on which we elaborate in the next section.

Conceptualising social inequality This paper addresses the issue of the poverty paradigm in the literature by specifically paying attention to spatially concentrated affluence. Understanding social inequality is central in research on neighbourhood effects, as social inequality is both their cause and consequence. It is, therefore, surprising that there has been relatively little attention paid to the theorising and conceptualising social inequality itself within the field, even in the studies which do include measures of affluence. In the following sections we argue for the need of studying not only the effects of poverty, but also affluence, arising from the theories of inequality used (sometimes only implicitly) in the field. Most of the quantitative neighbourhood effects research, including the papers discussed in the sections above, fits well into the so-called middle-range sociology, a scientific scope advocated by scientists such as Merton [40] and Boudon [41]. Middle-range sociology is situated between the grand theories and pure empiricism, with theories focused on specific aspects of social life, instead of the whole society; it aims to identify the same social mechanisms in different situations [42]. Middle-range social research papers focus on answering specific research questions based on, most often, quantitative methods such as statistical models or experiments [43]. Studies of neighbourhood effects often investigate specific mechanisms [26], related to the effect of some form of segregation and therefore social inequality in urban space. The strict paper structure characteristic for the middle-range social studies usually does not allow for extensive theoretical commentary about inequality. Nevertheless, the concepts used in these papers are based on a variety of competing approaches to class, status and inequality (for an early overview see [44]), even if these inspirations are not immediately visible. To understand why researchers tend to overlook the spatial effects of affluence, it is important to highlight some of the traditions in studies of social inequalities and how they relate to the neighbourhood effects field. Wright [11] outlines three main theoretical approaches within the sociology of class, social mobility and inequality: the individual-attributes approach (used in stratification research), opportunity hoarding (the Weberian approach), and mechanisms of domination and exploitation (the Marxist approach). The individual-attributes approach focuses on how people obtain resources that allow them to attain a certain occupation, and therefore a position within the social strata. These meritocratic resources (for example, education or motivation), combined with attributes people are born with, shape their chances in life. The opportunity hoarding approach begins with the assumption that access to the most prestigious positions tends to be strongly protected–or hoarded–by those already having access. This Weberian approach studies how individuals in the higher social strata distance themselves by setting up requirements based on economic, cultural and social capital, as well as legal mechanisms of exclusion. One example, from urban geography, is when a good school is only accessible to those living in a certain district, and house prices in that area are sufficiently high that only affluent households can afford to live there. The third approach evolves around mechanisms of domination and exploitation. This Marxist approach takes the analysis further, by asserting that those who restrict access to certain resources and positions can also “control the labour of another group to its own advantage” [11]. This approach is present in urban studies research on the exploitations of tenants and ordinary homeowners by landlords and developers, and the pressure the latter can exert on government policies.

Social inequality and neighbourhood effects Quantitative studies on neighbourhood effects usually mix elements of the individual-attributes and opportunity hoarding approaches. The individual-attributes approach manifests itself as focus on social mobility and the idea that the position an individual ultimately attains is shaped by a bundle of attributes, many of them related to physical space. This approach has the advantage that it is relatively easy to translate into statistical models. However, because of the high level of methodological sophistication in time and space-variant predictors, researchers often reduce their most important status-related neighbourhood characteristic(s) to a single proxy variable which captures the spatial context of an individual. One approach for measuring the affluence of a spatial context is using income [45]. Using categorical measures, or grouping neighbourhood inhabitants by their income level, often fits the research design better than using average income. Authors tend to follow the tradition of the field by focusing on poverty (choosing to create categories based on the percentage of poor households, etc.), which leads to the relatively lower number of studies on affluence [4]. From the perspective of the individual-attributes approach, this focus on poverty can be justified because there is no assumed relationship between poverty and affluence. As such, “eliminating poverty by improving the relevant attributes of the poor—their education, cultural level, human capital—would in no way harm the affluent” [11]. By contrast, “in the case of opportunity hoarding, the rich are rich in part because the poor are poor, and the things the rich do to maintain their wealth contribute to the disadvantages faced by poor people.” It therefore follows that “moves to eliminate poverty by removing the mechanisms of exclusion would potentially undermine the advantages of the affluent”. One could argue that a discussion on whether societal well-being can be improved without substantially limiting the choices or wealth of upper strata is not immediately relevant to more exploratory neighbourhood effects research. However, many neighbourhood studies still implicitly use opportunity hoarding theories to explain the mechanisms under investigation. Perhaps Maybe the most important examples are the already discussed concepts of cultural and social capital as developed by Bourdieu [29]. Bourdieu argues that social phenomena such as cultural norms are employed by upper classes to limit the access to their resources. Therefore, researching poverty in isolation disregards, potentially, the most influential part of the picture: the affluent social actors who possess the cultural, social, and economic capital. There are also theories focusing on the spread of disorder associated with capital deficiency, such as the broken windows theory [46]. It could still be illuminating to frame the commonly studied neighbourhood effects mechanisms in terms of the presence of various forms of capital, rather than a lack of it. Those studies investigating the effect of affluence often omit discussion of the wider implications of focussing on the effect of poverty in research. In addition to developing more methodologically sophisticated operationalisations of the current variables, quantitative neighbourhood effects researchers could deepen their assumptions and conclusions by grounding them in sociological theory. This is one of the goals of the current paper, although there are still interesting steps to be taken, such as questioning not only the poverty paradigm, but also the meritocracy paradigm [47] as well as expanding the conceptualisations of social class [48].

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