Moving to Prosperity? The Effect of Prolonged Exposure to Neighborhood Deprivation

ABSTRACT

Place of living has been associated with a variety of effects but is often considered stationary. Newer research reveals that the accumulation of deprivation conveys many of the effects that were initially thought to be captured by place of birth or current place of living; however, the view of accumulation as a static entity implies that only the length of residency matters. This study uses registry data to follow a cohort (N = 256,345) from birth to age 30 years. It investigates the effects of prolonged exposure to deprived neighborhoods on educational attainment and examines whether these effects are the same for those who accumulate exposure at different times. The study finds that exposure is important for educational attainment but that the effect differs at different life stages.

KEYWORDS:

• Neighborhood effects
• deprivation
• educational mobility
• inverse probability regression adjustment

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Rolf Lyneborg Lund http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1013-8620

Notes

1 Roads larger than 5 m across, streams, lakes, green areas larger than 100 m², fences, larger walls, railroads.

2 Denmark consists of five overall regions with separate taxes and income distributions. By using regions as a reference for the areas they contain, I counteract the fact that less-deprived areas can easily become classified as deprived in a national setting without actually being so.

3 Each year, the Danish Ministry of Transport publishes a list of areas that fall below a specific point on the scale. This study does not apply the same cutoff points but separates the data into deciles.

4 See also Holland (1986), Robins, Hernán, & Brumback (2000) and Rubin (1974).

5 Calculated by simple OLS.