Abstract not found

This paper surveys the modern economics literature on the role of neighborhoods in influencing socioeconomic outcomes. Neighborhood effects have been analyzed in a range of theoretical and applied contexts and have proven to be of interest in understanding questions ranging from the asymptotic properties of various evolutionary games to explaining the persistence of poverty in inner cities. As such, the survey covers a range of theoretical, econometric and empirical topics. One conclusion from the survey is that there is a need to better integrate findings from theory and econometrics into empirical studies; until this is done, empirical studies of the nature and magnitude of neighborhood effects are unlikely to persuade those skeptical about their importance.

provided exceptional research assistance. The usual caveat applies. 1 Other explanations for the achievement gap range from the genetic inferiority of minorities (Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray, 1994) to active discrimination on the part of teachers or schools (Elizabeth Haller, 1985). 265 Fifty years after the landmark Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, racial disparities in achievement are a robust empirical reality. Black children enter kindergarten lagging behind white children, and these differences grow throughout the school years (James S. Coleman et al., 1966; Fryer and Steven D.

∗I am grateful to all my colleagues and coauthors whose ideas, intuition, and work fill this chapter.

NBER Working Paper No. 11049

(preliminary and incomplete) This paper describes basic facts regarding the black-white test score gap over the first four years of school. A number of stylized facts emerge. Black children enter school substantially behind their white counterparts in reading and math, but including a small number of covariates erases the gap. Over the first four years of school, however, blacks lose substantial ground relative to other races; averaging.10 standard deviations per school year. By the end of third grade there is a large Black-White test score gap that cannot be explained by observable characteristics. Blacks are falling behind in virtually all categories of skills tested, except the most basic. None of the explanations we examine, including systematic differences in school quality across races, convincingly explain the divergent academic trajectory of Black students.