If "badneighborhoods are truly bad for children and families,
especially the minority poor, can moving to better neighborhoods
lead them to better lives? Might these families escape poverty
altogether, beyond having a better quality of life to help them
cope with being poor? Federal policymakers and planners thought so,
on both counts, and in 1994, they launched Moving to Opportunity.
The $80 million social experiment enrolled nearly 5,000 very
low-income, mostly black and Hispanic families, many of them on
welfare, who were living in public housing in the inner-city
neighborhoods of Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, and New
York. Yet five years after they had entered the program, many of
the families in the favored experimentalgroup had returned to high
poverty neighborhoods. Young women showed big drops in risky
behavior and big improvements in mental health, on average, while
young male movers did not. The males even showed signs of increased
delinquency if they had lived, at least for a time, in the low
poverty areas. Parents likewise showed major drops in anxiety and
depression-two of the crippling symptoms of being chronically poor
in high-risk ghettos-but not in employment or income. And many
movers appeared to be maintaining the same limited social
circles-mostly disadvantaged relatives and close friends-despite
living in more advantaged neighborhoods. The authors of this
important and engaging new book wanted to know why. Moving to
Opportunity tackles the great, unresolved question of how to
overcome persistent ghetto poverty. It mines a unique demonstration
program with a human voice, not just statistics and charts, rooted
in the lives of those who "signed upfor MTO. It shines a light on
the hopes, surprises, achievements and limitations of a major
social experiment-and does so at a time of tremendous economic,
social, and political change in our nation. As the authors make
clear, for all its ambition, MTO is a uniquely American experiment,
and this book brings home its lessons for policymakers and
advocates, scholars, students, journalists, and all who share a
deep concern for opportunity and inequality in our country.
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