The Power Of Place-Based Solutions: Poverty Is A Social Issu ✓ Solved

The Power of Place-Based Solutions Poverty is a social issue

Poverty is a social issue surrounded by contentious debates. Scholars have thoroughly examined its causes, its persistence, and its potential solutions, but have yet to reach any consensus regarding those solutions. One of the most troublesome issues for scholars working in this field is that children raised in poor neighborhoods rarely make it out to better living conditions; research has shown that they typically end up in the same economic situation as their families. This results in an ongoing process of generational poverty with no upward mobility.

This review of literature from academic and governmental sources will examine the generational poverty that exists in low-income neighborhoods and examine potential solutions. While all of the sources reviewed agree that the lack of upward mobility in low-income neighborhoods is an urgent problem, they differ on how to solve that problem.

As illustrated by each individual author, there are clear drawbacks to being raised in poor neighborhoods. First off, in Patrick Sharkey’s book Stuck in Place: Urban Neighborhoods and the End of Progress toward Racial Equality, he explains that neighborhoods are classified as “poor” if twenty percent or more of families living in the neighborhood had incomes below the poverty line. Although this seems like a small percentage of an entire area, almost every member of the neighborhood is affected, an idea that is explored in more depth in Keri-Nicole Dillman and Laura Peck’s “Tensions and Opportunities in Evaluating Place-based Interventions.” Dillman and Peck tell us that the problems in a poor community not only affect the specific person but the family and the surrounding community system as well.

Megan Sandel et al. parallel Dillman and Peck’s analysis in their journal article “Neighborhood-Level Interventions to Improve Childhood Opportunity and Lift Children Out of Poverty.” When looking at the neighborhood, even if only twenty percent of the population may be living below the poverty line, Sandel et al. explain that these poor neighborhoods collectively have fewer opportunities and are associated with adverse health effects. These setbacks in opportunity and health hinder upward mobility and show a trend that children raised in poverty will continue to stay in poverty, even as adults.

The sources surveyed thus far would all agree that it is difficult to prevent children from getting stuck in poverty because there are so many factors to consider. For instance, not only are there few employment opportunities and poor healthcare, as mentioned by Sandel et al., but the children are also behind in their education, something that all the sources touch upon. Sandel et al.’s point is further illustrated in Sharkey’s study, where he uses a similar IQ measure to gauge the academic performance of children from poor neighborhoods compared to non-poor neighborhoods. In his study, he shows that the mean score from children in poor neighborhoods is about eight to nine points less than the mean score of middle-class children. To put this into perspective, Sharkey explains that these eight to nine points are “equivalent to missing about two to four years of schooling.” With such a significant impediment to education coupled with the previously stated obstacles, it makes sense as to why the vicious cycle of poverty has continued for so long.

Though they agree on the problem, the ideal solution to neighborhood poverty is different for each author. There are two main types of solution: a mobility assistance program or a place-based initiative program. According to the Office of Policy Development and Research’s report “Understanding Neighborhood Effects of Concentrated Poverty,” a mobility assistance program such as “Moving to Opportunity” (MTO) has proven effective in battling the effects of neighborhood poverty. This MTO program moves low-income families out of concentrated poverty areas and into better middle-class neighborhoods. Compared to control groups that only received the normal place-based assistance, the groups that were moved into better neighborhoods experienced better physical and mental health.

To further support mobility assistance programs, Sandel et al. also give positive feedback regarding the MTO program. They noted that “every year of childhood spent in a higher-opportunity neighborhood was associated with an increased benefit,” such as higher lifetime earnings or, for female participants, a lower likelihood of being single parents. However, both Sandel et al. and PD&R recognize certain flaws in the MTO program. They both identified strange mixed effects of the program such as an increase in mental illnesses for boys moved out of poverty.

Regardless of this issue, mobility assistance programs have undeniable benefits and are solutions worth mentioning. While PD&R and Sandel et al. both identify the benefits of mobility assistance programs despite their drawbacks, Sharkey and even Sandel et al. both challenge the idea that such programs are the only way to address neighborhood poverty. Both authors argue in favor of place-based initiatives, which make changes within the area of concentrated poverty as opposed to just moving people into better neighborhoods. Dillman and Peck define place-based initiatives as “efforts to change public systems and policies to address the health and social problems affecting poor communities.”

To provide a better understanding of what these initiatives might look like, Sharkey touches upon several examples of place-based initiative programs such as the Harlem Children’s Zone. This zone is an area that provides countless benefits to children beginning from early childhood and guiding them through college. Using charter schools, parent education, and health services, the zone has been found to be effective in positively influencing entire neighborhoods. One aspect of the Harlem Children’s Zone that makes it so successful is its multifaceted approach in supporting education along with health.

In a similar vein, Sandel et al. identify other successful place-based initiative programs, like Healthy Neighborhoods Healthy Families and Vital Village Network. Both, like the Harlem Children’s Zone, focus on the many issues that arise within an area of concentrated poverty and aim to make positive impacts. When enacting place-based initiatives, the entire community is affected. With the community encompassing each person in the neighborhood, there must be some profound effects that the community can have on neighborhood poverty.

In fact, Sandel et al. venture to say that community engagement has one of the most prominent roles within place-based interventions, being able to create “greater equity and potential for success” in the neighborhood. The effect of the community is so prominent in successful interventions because of the usual absence of a strong collective efficacy in poor regions. Sandel et al. define collective efficacy as “the linkage of mutual trust and willingness to intervene for the common good.” An example of a neighborhood with high collective efficacy would be an area where people can feel comfortable asking to borrow a small amount of money from a neighbor or having a neighbor watch over their kids.

Although this may be seen as just a small favor, these little things promote collective efficacy and build stronger communities. This idea is further supported by the PD&R, which recognizes that when communities work together—whether formally or even just informally as seen in the twenty-dollar example—the strong ties that form within the neighborhood allow the community to “accomplish important tasks, such as preventing crime and delinquency.” Clearly, Sandel et al. would argue that the presence of a strong community can make the difference between neighborhoods that begin to flourish through interventions and those that end up stuck in continual poverty.

As they put it, neighborhood poverty must not just be a “top-down approach” with only the help of outside aid, but to engage in “bottom-up methods” through the community. They argue, “Interventions must focus on a community-identified problem with a community-driven solution.” These programs, however, are by no means without faults. Even though Dillman and Peck agree that place-based initiatives can be advantageous, they draw attention to flaws in our methods for evaluating these programs. Unlike the prior two scholars, Dillman and Peck argue that place-based initiative programs are too broad and wide to accurately measure. To counteract this concern, Dillman and Peck simply suggest a new perspective on the evaluation of the initiatives.

They emphasize that there are too many factors to consider in combination with control and treatment variables and that you cannot always see the direct impacts of any certain program when an entire community is being considered. They encourage that we not just categorize the effects of the initiatives into one big picture, but to offset this broad view with more specific evaluations to ensure we accurately measure the positive impacts of place-based initiatives. For example, they point out that none of these programs have been evaluated with Randomly Controlled Trials (RCTs), which would isolate other factors that may affect the results of the program. RCTs randomly select multiple communities to implement a program so that if the program does indeed render positive results, these results can be seen across all the tested communities.

Dillman and Peck’s argument does not completely undermine the program evaluations mentioned by Sharkey and Sandel et al., where only one specific region was considered, but it does call into question the results of these programs because it’s not certain whether the program indeed produced the results or if it was due to another factor specific to that area.

As seen in this review of literature, each author identifies disadvantages to being born in low-income neighborhoods and communicates that we must take action to mitigate these disadvantages. They do not, however, agree on the best method for doing so. While some authors advocate for place-based initiatives, others either support mobility assistance programs or question the stated efficacy of place-based initiatives thus far. Because studies have demonstrated problems with mobility assistance programs, we must conclude based on the literature that further study using RCTs needs to be done on place-based initiatives to determine if they can overcome these limitations. This review has been limited to sources that compared two specific types of programs for mitigating generational poverty in low-income neighborhoods. Further study may uncover entirely new solutions unexamined here due to limitations in the number of sources reviewed.

References

• Dillman, Keri-Nicole, and Laura R. Peck. "Tensions and Opportunities in Evaluating Place-based Interventions." Community Investments, vol. 24, no. 1, 2012, pp. 14-17.
• Office of Policy Development and Research (PD&R). "Evidence Matters: Understanding Neighborhood Effects of Concentrated Poverty." HUD USER, Winter 2011, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Accessed 13 Oct. 2016.
• Sandel, Megan, et al. "Neighborhood-Level Interventions to Improve Childhood Opportunity and Lift Children Out of Poverty." Academic Pediatrics, vol. 16, no. 3S, 2016, pp. S1-S130, Science Direct, doi: 10.1016/j.acap.2016.01.013. Accessed 13 Oct. 2016.
• Sharkey, Patrick. Stuck in Place: Urban Neighborhoods and the End of Progress toward Racial Equality. U of Chicago P, 2013.