Strong neighborhoods give boost to neighborhoods nearby,University of Chicago study shows

Neighborhoods comprised of people who watch out for their neighbors’ children radiate that concern to adjacent and sometimes less advantaged neighborhoods encouraging people in those surrounding neighborhoods to also watch out for their children, new research at the University of Chicago shows.

In a comprehensive study of Chicago neighborhoods, Robert Sampson, the Lucy Flower Professor in Sociology at the University of Chicago, shows for the first time how much a community’s ability to nourish its children is helped, or hindered, by surrounding neighborhoods. The research also shows that previous work on neighborhoods, which focused on poverty and the underclass was a limited way of understanding how neighborhoods work, Sampson said.

“Adults are more likely to invest effort in the local monitoring of children when others around them are doing likewise," Sampson said. "Parents with young children appear particularly sensitive to the geographic location of neighborhoods and schools in addition to their internal characteristics.”

Sampson is the lead author of the paper “Beyond Social Capital: Spatial Dynamics of Collective Efficacy for Children,” which is being published in the October issue of the American Sociological Review. The other authors are Jeffrey Morenoff, Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Michigan and Felton Earls, Professor of Child Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

The study was based on interviews with more than 8,500 residents of 343 neighborhood clusters in Chicago. Neighborhood clusters are areas of relatively homogeneous social characteristics and geographies. The residents of these clusters were interviewed as part of a continuing project Sampson and others have undertaken to study Chicago neighborhoods. Chicago was chosen for the study because it is representative of urban communities nationally.

The researchers sought to discover how people in a neighborhood relate to one another in the effort to strengthen their neighborhoods. They were not looking at friendship patterns, but rather at how residents act in the mutual interests of children.

People who share expectations and are willing to connect with others create a high level of “collective efficacy for children,” according to Sampson, who builds on research done by the late James Coleman, a renowned University of Chicago sociologist.

In order to gauge how well members of a neighborhood work together to achieve common goals, researchers asked Chicagoans to determine if adults and children in their neighborhoods are linked to one another (in intergenerational closure), to discover the extent to which adults share information about neighborhood children (reciprocated transaction), and to find out whether neighbors are willing to provide informal social control and mutual support for children. The researchers then analyzed the responses to determine patterns based on economic and demographic characteristics within the neighborhood clusters.

Among their findings are these:

• Racial segregation has an even more devastating impact on the health of Chicago neighborhoods than previously known. Black neighborhoods are much more likely to be surrounded by economically disadvantaged neighborhoods than are white neighborhoods. Whether rich or poor, however, white neighborhoods are much more likely than black neighborhoods to reap the radiating l effects of proximity to neighborhoods with a high degree of shared child control.

• People in neighborhoods with high levels of poverty and high rates of single-parent households have lower expectations for neighborhood child control.

• People in neighborhoods with a high concentration of adults are less likely to supervise the neighborhood youth.

• Affluent neighborhoods with greater incomes and higher educational levels are more likely to have cross-generational ties.

• Immigrant communities have lower expectations for shared child control.

• Neighborhood stability increases the likelihood of collective expectations for child control, while high residential density decreases the expectations.

• Sharing of information and help is much more likely among homeowners, long-term and young residents, and those with fewer changes in residency.