Promoting the Positive Development of Boys in High‐Poverty Neighborhoods: Evidence From Four Anti‐Poverty Experiments
Journal of Research on Adolescence
Published online on December 21, 2012
Abstract
This study uses geocoded address data and information about parents' economic behavior and children's development from four random‐assignment welfare and anti‐poverty experiments conducted during the 1990s. We find that the impacts of these welfare and anti‐poverty programs on boys' and girls' developmental outcomes during the transition to early adolescence differ as a function of neighborhood poverty levels. The strongest positive impacts of these programs are among boys who lived in high‐poverty neighborhoods at the time their parents enrolled in the studies, with smaller or nonstatistically significant effects for boys in lower‐poverty neighborhoods and for girls across all neighborhoods. This research informs our understanding of how neighborhood context and child gender may interact with employment‐based policies to affect children's well‐being.