Neighbourhood effects on educational achievement: Evidence from the census and National Child Development Study

(2002) - Stephen Gibbons

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Tags:: #paper #NCDS #Attainment
Cite Key:: [@Gibbons2002]

Abstract

Area-targeted regeneration policy implicitly assumes that neighbourhoods make a difference to the prospects and achievements of individuals, especially children. Surprisingly, the evidence for this in the British context is sparse. To address this, we estimate the impact of a child’s neighbourhood on his or her final educational attainments using data on British children who were teenagers during the 1970s. The paper is the first to look at the implications of neighbourhood influences for social mobility between generations in Britain. The focus is, however, quite specific: we ask whether the characteristics of a residential neighbourhood community for teenagers influences the final level of qualification they obtain. The emphasis is also on measurement of the size of these effects, and on separating out the causal effect of neighbourhoods, rather than seeking firm explanations. The overall finding of this paper is that neighbourhoods do influence outcomes, regardless of family resources, but we find nothing to contradict the general consensus that neighbourhoods determine only a small proportion of the variation in individual outcomes, and that family background matters more. The benefits from aggregate improvements in neighbourhood quality do imply higher social benefits from tackling childhood disadvantage at the neighbourhood, rather than the family or individual level, but the evidence from this paper is that these additional benefits are quite small.

Notes

“The overall finding of this paper is that neighbourhoods do influence outcomes, regardless of family resources, but we find nothing to contradict the general consensus that neighbourhoods determine only a small proportion of the variation in individual outcomes, and that family background matters more.” (Gibbons, 2002, p. 3)