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Neighbourhood Effects Research: New Perspectives

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Neighbourhood Effects Research: New Perspectives

Abstract

Over the last 25 years a vast body of literature has been published investigating neighbourhood effects: the idea that neighbourhood characteristics can have a significant effect on residents’ life chances over and above the effect of their individual characteristics. There is little doubt that neighbourhood effects exist, but we know little about the causal mechanisms which produce them, their relative importance compared to individual characteristics, and under which circumstances and in which places these effects are important. This chapter discusses some of the main theoretical and empirical challenges in neighbourhood effects research, related to the identification of true causal effects. An over emphasis on statistical techniques to overcome the problems related to modelling selection bias had distracted us from a much more important issue: the theoretical and empirical identification of potential causal pathways behind neighbourhood effects. This chapter offers seven ways forward for neighbourhood effects research: development of clear hypotheses; empirically testing explicit hypotheses; investigating neighbourhood selection; integrate models of neighbourhood selection and models of neighbourhood effects; investigate various spatial scales; development of better longitudinal data; and the use of mixed methods research.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In our search we used both the UK and US spelling of “neighbo(u)rhood effect”, excluding the pluaral “neighbo(u)rhood effects” to avoid double counting documents which mention both singular and plural forms (we found a total of 27,500 hits on “neighbo(u)rhood effect”). Counting both hits in UK and US spelling will potentially also result in some double counts as both spellings can occur in the same document as reference lists typically use the original spelling of a title, regardless the spelling of the document.

  2. 2.

    1987 was chosen because this was the year Julius Wilson published his famous book The Truly Disadvantaged. Google Scholar also returned publications containing the words “neighbo(u)rhood effects” from before 1987, since Wilson’s book was by no means the starting point of the debate.

  3. 3.

    Some go a lot further in criticizing the neighbourhood effects literature and reject the whole concept of neighbourhood effects by suggesting that they are the product of an ideological discourse. Bauder (2002) presents a strong critique of the neighbourhood effects literature, and notes that “neighbourhood effects are implicit in the culture-of-poverty and underclass concepts” (2002, p.88) through the pathologising of unwed pregnancies, high school dropouts, number of female headed households as de facto societal ills. Bauder argues that “the idea of neighbourhood effects can be interpreted as yet another episode in the on-going discourse of inner-city marginality that blames marginal communities for their own misery” (ibid). Bauder accuses those who research neighbourhood effects of reproducing the very notions of marginality that they seek to understand.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. OTB Research Institute for the Built Environment, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands

    Maarten van Ham

  2. Centre for Housing Research, School of Geography and Geosciences, University of St Andrews, Fife, Scotland, UK

    David Manley & Duncan Maclennan

  3. Urban Studies, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, Scotland, UK

    Nick Bailey

  4. The Cathie Marsh Centre for Census and Survey Research, School of Social Sciences, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

    Ludi Simpson

Authors
  1. Maarten van Ham
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  2. David Manley
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  3. Nick Bailey
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  4. Ludi Simpson
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  5. Duncan Maclennan
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Correspondence to Maarten van Ham .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. , OTB Research Institute for the Built Environment, Delft University of Technology, Delft, Netherlands

    Maarten van Ham

  2. , Centre for Housing Research, University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews, KY16 9AL, Fife, United Kingdom

    David Manley

  3. , Urban Studies, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, G12 8RS, United Kingdom

    Nick Bailey

  4. , The Cathie Marsh Centre for Census and S, University of Manchester, Manchester, M13 9PL, United Kingdom

    Ludi Simpson

  5. , Centre for Housing Research, University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews, KY16 9AL, Fife, United Kingdom

    Duncan Maclennan

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van Ham, M., Manley, D., Bailey, N., Simpson, L., Maclennan, D. (2012). Neighbourhood Effects Research: New Perspectives. In: van Ham, M., Manley, D., Bailey, N., Simpson, L., Maclennan, D. (eds) Neighbourhood Effects Research: New Perspectives. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2309-2_1

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