Brickonomics

There’s currently a good deal of support here in the UK and in other countries for ‘mixed communities’ – mixed in terms of income and/or tenure, that is (though in practice governments seem a lot more willing to try and break up concentrations of poverty than concentrations of wealth). In the UK this is part of the justification for requiring affordable housing to be included in private developments, while it has been taken further in the US with policies such as Moving to Opportunity that focus on transplanting low-income households into ‘better’ areas.

Apart from the perceived benefits of reducing the concentration of poverty itself, socioeconomic mixing is argued to improve the ‘life chances’ of poor people through neighbourhood effects (basically, being around richer people is good for your job prospects your child’s education). Here’s a bit of research suggesting that “exposure to more economically successful neighbors” accounts for much of the gap in educational attainment between black and white households in the US.

But are poor people actually better off in affluent neighbourhoods? According to one rather significant measure, perhaps not: death rates appear to be higher for poor people who live in rich areas than for those who don’t:

(here’s the chart source – thanks to Truck and Barter for the link)

The researchers suggest two reasons for their new findings:

The first is purely economic, as the cost of living in an affluent neighborhood could leave poor people with little disposable income to spend on essential goods and services, such as health care and healthy food, and less time to take advantage of the benefits of living in a high-income neighborhood.

“Economically this group may be worse off,” said Winkleby. Access to free social services and health care could also be a factor because these services are often concentrated in low-income neighborhoods, she said.

Another possibility is that poorer people in higher-income neighborhoods fare worse for psychological and social reasons.

A discrepancy in a person’s social position relative to others may have an effect on a person’s health, said Winkleby. “You look out every day and you’re at the bottom of the social ladder,” she explained.

The researchers caution that their study does not mean poor people are necessarily better off living in low-income neighborhoods. There could be other benefits to living in a wealthier neighborhood, said Cubbin. “We don’t want to imply that poor people should move to poor neighborhoods, where there continues to be great need.”

I’m surprised by how strong the relationship seems to be – and not having read the full research report (abstract here) I’m curious about how the results relate to the seemingly contradictory earlier findings of the same researchers.