From Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity
What zip code you grow up in has enormous predictive power in terms of future life outcomes. And researchers at the Opportunity Insights program at Harvard University, led by Raj Chetty, have done extensive work in recent years mapping how likely children are to move up the economic ladder in neighborhoods across the country. Building off this premise that place matters, the same research team collaborated with housing authorities in the Seattle and King County region to study their attempt to help families in moving to high-opportunity neighborhoods. And a recent Opportunity Insights report suggests the work in Seattle is yielding big results.
Spotlight spoke with Stefanie DeLuca, the James Coleman Professor of Sociology & Social Policy at Johns Hopkins University and one of the authors of the recent report, about the results of the study and their implications for public policy moving forward. The conversation (here) has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
