Mechanisms of the Neighborhood Effect: The Indirect Effects from Peers and School Quality

Background

Neighborhoods in which children grow up are increasingly recognized as one of the most important determinants affecting children’s outcomes, with consequences that impact adulthood. Consistent research shows the negative impacts of growing up in disadvantaged neighborhoods, and policy makers have extensively discussed the best strategies for counteracting the consequences of such experiences. However, empirical studies have not yet uncovered the mechanisms of why and how growing up in disadvantaged neighborhoods affect children’s outcomes. Understanding the mediating mechanisms is important because it is useful in designing policy interventions to support children in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Since reducing neighborhood disadvantage is difficult and takes time, focusing on the mediating context may provide insights on strategies that may be effective in alleviating the negative consequences of growing up in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Children build social relationships with their peers and neighbors within their neighborhoods and gain access to important institutional resources that may affect their outcomes. Among potential pathways that can explain the neighborhood effect, this study applies social capital and institutional resource theories and examines whether low-achieving peer groups and low-quality school mediate the association between neighborhood disadvantage and children’s high school GPA.

 

Method

This study uses data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, a longitudinal study of a nationally representative sample of US adolescents in grades 7-12 in 1994-95. The analytic sample consists of 4,798 children living in 448 census tract neighborhoods. High school GPA is measured by averaging grades from all courses taken in the last year of high school. Neighborhood disadvantage quintile is measured by using principal component analysis based on seven census tract neighborhood characteristics (e.g. poverty rate, mean household income, unemployment rate, % female-headed households, % residents without high school diploma, % residents with college degrees, % residents in managerial/professional occupations). Peer group characteristics include peers’ average GPA and their aspiration scores about higher education. School quality is measured by generating a composite score based on ten school characteristics (e.g. qualities of the curricula, teacher qualification, academic environment, and other school-level variables). This study uses recently developed causal mediation models, using inverse odds ratio weighting (IORW) to test for joint mediation effects. The IORW approach allows for interactions between multiple mediators, estimating the joint mediation of the exposure effect by a set of mediators that extends the standard mediation analysis.

Results

Findings point to the significance of joint mediation through peers and schools on the high school GPA. Living in disadvantaged neighborhoods decreases peer groups’ GPA, their aspirations for higher education, and school quality, which in turn decrease children’s high school GPA (b = –0.015). The joint indirect effects are primarily a result of having peer groups with low GPAs (b = –0.014).

Conclusion/Implication

The findings highlight the importance of peer groups while examining the impact of growing up in disadvantaged neighborhoods on children’s high school GPA. Thus, the focus of policy intervention may be placed on targeting peer networks to improve academic achievement and change social norms affecting access to higher education.