Growing Up in a Bad Neighborhood Does More Harm Than We Thought

What type of neighborhood and environment you grow up in can play a big role in ones future economic success.  Recent research shows that it may play a much larger role than previously thought. The government did an “moving opportunity experiment” which From 1994 to 1998, invited low-income families living in public housing to enter a lottery that could reshape their lives.  The lottery randomly assigned a kind of experimental treatment to winners, while the losers served as a control group. The winners received housing vouchers that helped them pay the rent if they moved out of public housing. The losers stayed in public housing for as long as they remained eligible. Over the years the families were tracked and the study found that kids who moved when they were young were able to establish higher earnings than those whose families did not win the lottery. A newer study found that although the neighborhood can play a large role, parents attitudes and willingness to keep the bad things away from their kids also played a large role in future income.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/27/upshot/growing-up-in-a-bad-neighborhood-does-more-harm-than-we-thought.html?ref=economy