Neighborhood Opportunity Structures and Immigrants' Socioeconomic Advancement

George Galster, Kurt Metzger and Ruth Waite

Journal of Housing Research, 1999, vol. 10, issue 1, 95-127

Abstract: This article explores immigrants' socioeconomic success consequential to their choice of neighborhood. We describe and analyze seven aspects of socioeconomic success during the 1980s for 14 immigrant groups in five metropolitan areas. Exposure indices measuring aspects of the census tracts in which these groups lived in 1980 are calculated and analyzed. Multiple regression explores the degree to which 1980s neighborhood context explains socioeconomic advances of pre-1980 immigrants during the 1980s, controlling for group starting position in 1980 and metropolitan area of residence.Findings support the notion that a neighborhood of poorly educated, welfare-assisted, nonworking residents retards educational, professional, and employment prospects of immigrants. We also find evidence that a higher incidence of residential exposure to other members of one's immigrant group leads to higher rates of poverty and, perhaps, lower gains in employment during the subsequent decade. These findings should be interpreted cautiously, however, because of data limitations, specification shortcomings, and ambiguities in interpreting causation.

Date: 1999
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/10835547.1999.12091945 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:rjrhxx:v:10:y:1999:i:1:p:95-127

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/rjrh20

DOI: 10.1080/10835547.1999.12091945

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Housing Research is currently edited by Kimberly Goodwin

More articles in Journal of Housing Research from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().