A Journal of Policy Development and Research Moving to opportunity voluMe 14, nuMber 2 • 2012 U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development | Office of Policy Development and Research Managing Editor: Mark D. Shroder Associate Editor: Michelle P. Matuga Advisory Board Peter Dreier Occidental College Richard K. Green University of Southern California Keith R. Ihlanfeldt The Florida State University Annette M. Kim Massachusetts Institute of Technology Carlos E. Martín Abt Associates Inc. Douglas S. Massey Princeton University Sandra J. Newman Johns Hopkins University Marybeth Shinn Vanderbilt University Raymond J. Struyk Paul Waddell University of California, Berkeley John C. Weicher Hudson Institute, Inc. Cityscape A Journal of Policy Development and Research Moving to opportunity voluMe 14, nuMber 2 • 2012 U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Office of Policy Development and Research The goal of Cityscape is to bring high-quality original research on housing and community development issues to scholars, government officials, and practitioners.Cityscape is open to all relevant disciplines, including architecture, consumer research, demography, economics, engineering, ethnography, finance, geography, law, planning, political science, public policy, regional science, sociology, statistics, and urban studies. Cityscape is published three times a year by the Office of Policy Development and Research (PD&R) of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Subscriptions are available at no charge and single copies at a nominal fee. The journal is also available on line at http://www.huduser.org/periodicals/cityscape.html. PD&R welcomes submissions to the Refereed Papers section of the journal. Our referee process is double blind and timely, and our referees are highly qualified. The managing editor will also respond to authors who submit outlines of proposed papers regarding the suitability of those proposals for inclusion in Cityscape. Send manuscripts or outlines to [email protected]. Opinions expressed in the articles are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of HUD or the U.S. government. Visit PD&R’s websites, www.hud.gov/policy or www.huduser.org, to find this report and others sponsored by PD&R. Other services of HUD USER, PD&R’s Research and Information Service, include listservs, special interest and bimonthly publications (best practices, significant studies from other sources), access to public use databases, and a hotline (1–800–245–2691) for help with accessing the information you need. Contents Symposium Moving to Opportunity Guest Editor: Jens Ludwig Guest Editor’s Introduction ........................................................................................................ 1 Acknowledgment of Extraordinary Obligations ...................................................................... 29 Moving to Opportunity: Why, How, and What Next? .............................................................. 31 by Mark D. Shroder and Larry L. Orr Achieving MTO’s High Effective Response Rates: Strategies and Tradeoffs ........................... 57 by Nancy Gebler, Lisa A. Gennetian, Margaret L. Hudson, Barbara Ward, and Matthew Sciandra MTO: A Successful Housing Intervention ................................................................................ 87 by Jennifer Comey, Susan J. Popkin, and Kaitlin Franks The Long-Term Effects of Moving to Opportunity on Adult Health and Economic Self-Sufficiency ........................................................................................................................ 109 by Lisa Sanbonmatsu, Jordan Marvakov, Nicholas A. Potter, Fanghua Yang, Emma Adam, William J. Congdon, Greg J. Duncan, Lisa A. Gennetian, Lawrence F. Katz, Jeffrey R. Kling, Ronald C. Kessler, Stacy Tessler Lindau, Jens Ludwig, and Thomas W. McDade The Long-Term Effects of Moving to Opportunity on Youth Outcomes ............................... 137 by Lisa A. Gennetian, Matthew Sciandra, Lisa Sanbonmatsu, Jens Ludwig, Lawrence F. Katz, Greg J. Duncan, Jeffrey R. Kling, and Ronald C. Kessler Making MTO Health Results More Relevant to Current Housing Policy: Next Steps ......... 169 by Thomas D. Cook and Coady Wing Constrained Compliance: Solving the Puzzle of MTO’s Lease-Up Rates and Why Mobility Matters ...................................................................................................................... 181 by Kathryn Edin, Stefanie DeLuca, and Ann Owens Increasing the Value of MTO Research for Housing Policy Development ............................ 195 by Edgar O. Olsen Moving Neighborhoods Versus Reforming Schools: A Canadian’s Perspective.................... 207 by Philip Oreopoulos Commentary: MTO’s Contribution to a Virtuous Cycle of Policy Experimentation and Learning ............................................................................................................................ 213 by Margery Austin Turner Cityscape iii Contents Point of Contention: Defining Neighborhoods Guest Editor: Ron Wilson The Tyranny of Census Geography: Small-Area Data and Neighborhood Statistics ............ 219 by Jonathan Sperling Defining Neighborhoods in Space and Time .......................................................................... 225 by Ralph B. Taylor Defining Neighborhoods for Research and Policy ................................................................. 231 by Claudia Coulton Dynamic Geography: The Changing Definition of Neighborhood ........................................ 237 by Marc S. Buslik Refereed Papers Geographic Patterns of Serious Mortgage Delinquency: Cross-MSA Comparisons ............. 243 by Lariece M. Brown, Hui-Chin Chen, Melissa T. Narragon, and Paul S. Calem The Housing Needs of Rental Assistance Applicants ............................................................ 275 by Josh Leopold Departments Graphic Detail Geographic Patterns of Regional Unemployment Versus Unemployment Compensation in the United States—2009 ..................................................................................................... 299 by Ron Wilson Data Shop Introducing the Ohio New Establishment Dynamics Data .................................................... 303 by Joel A. Elvery and Ellen Cyran Impact Impact Analysis of the Proposed Rule on Streamlining the Portability Process in the Housing Choice Voucher Program .......................................................................................... 313 by Yves Sopngwi Djoko Correction Comparing Public Housing and Housing Voucher Tenants With Bayesian Propensity Scores ....................................................................................................................................... 321 by Brent D. Mast Referees 2011-12 ................................................................................................................ 323 iv Moving to Opportunity Guest Editor’s Introduction Jens Ludwig University of Chicago National Bureau of Economic Research The contents of this introduction are the views of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Congressional Budget Office, the U.S. government, or any state or local agency that provided data. Residential segregation of America’s neighborhoods by income has been increasing over the past 40 years, with nearly 9 million people now living in census tracts with poverty rates of 40 percent or more (Kneebone, Nadeau, and Berube, 2011; Watson, 2009). Because housing policy affects the geographic concentration of poverty in a variety of ways, policymakers have long been concerned about the possibility that living in a distressed neighborhood could have some harmful effects on the life outcomes of adults and children. The list of plausible reasons why neighborhood poverty might adversely affect people’s well-being and behavior is long and includes limited exposure to peers and role models who support prosocial behaviors such as schooling and work; neighbors who are willing and able to cooperate and work together to improve community life; high-quality local public institutions such as schools, police, health care, and housing; and elevated exposure to risk factors like pollution or crime.1 Empirically isolating the independent effects of neighborhood environments on the life outcomes of residents turns out to be quite challenging in practice, because most people have at least some degree of choice regarding where they live. A large body of research dating back to the 17th century shows that people who live in relatively more distressed neighborhoods tend to have worse life outcomes than do those people living in less disadvantaged areas, even after statistically adjusting for characteristics of the individuals and their families. What remains unclear is the degree to which these patterns reflect trueneighborhood effects—that is, the causal influence of neighborhood environments on the life outcomes of residents—or instead reflect the influence of hard-to-measure characteristics of people that lead them to wind up living in different types of neighborhoods—or what social scientists call selection bias. To overcome concerns with selection bias and help isolate neighborhood effects on low-income families, in the early 1990s the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) 1 For excellent reviews of the theoretical and empirical literatures on neighborhood effects, see Ellen and