| COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT Villa Victoria: The Transformation of Social Capital in a Boston Barrio In this book, based on his doctoral research at Harvard, Mario Luis Small focuses on civic life at Villa Victoria, a predominantly Puerto Rican housing development in Boston’s South End. Contrary to most stereotypes of public housing, Villa Victoria has had a rich tradition of civic participation, hundreds of cultural events, and, at least in some points during its history, little violence. Professor Small asks, “If we could understand how residents maintained social capital here despite living in concentrated poverty, perhaps we could learn how to prevent the deterioration of social relations in other poor neighborhoods.” Using both archival materials and individual interviews, Small explores how the deterioration of social capital in poor communities depends on the ways neighborhood poverty manifests itself. He uses these findings to critique many prevailing assumptions about the linkages between poverty and social isolation. EDUCATION Good intentions about redistribution are not enough in school finance: understanding the economics is important too, contend Hoxby and Kuziemko. Failure to do so, they warn, can inadvertently lead to school-finance systems that reduce property values, create perverse incentives for local school districts, and perhaps sow the seeds of their own demise. Illustratively, Texas’ so-called Robin Hood school finance system, which was approaching collapse ten years after it was put in place (and was recently found to be unconstitutional by a state judge), destroyed about $81 billion of property wealth in Texas ($27,000 of property wealth per pupil) while shrinking the spending gap between Texas' property-poor and property-rich districts by only $500 per pupil. Though an extreme example, Hoxby (who was an expert witness for the state in the recent case challenging Massachusetts ' school finance system) and Kuziemko note that most other states' school-finance systems share Texas ’ features to some degree. School finance is still an important and legitimate problem for state governments, they conclude. However, it is essentially a tax problem and, like other tax problems, can be solved more or less well. The scale of mistakes can be massive, simply because school finance operates on a massive scale. The Excel Academy Charter Middle School Set in a Boston charter school that had recently been approved by the state, this new Harvard Business School case focuses on the choices the school’s founders had to make about teacher compensation plans as they finalized the school’s initial teaching team. The founders considered two performance-based compensation plans as alternatives to the standard salary structure of public schools. These schemes varied in the degree to which they would reward individual and school-wide performance, and both were controversial in principle and in practice. The case describes the factors considered by the founders, which ranged from specific concerns about how to specify and gather performance data on teaching, to the most general of inquiries about the nature of excellent teaching and teachers. HOUSING Experimental Analysis of Neighborhood Effects on Youth These two papers assess the economic, health, and social effects of the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) demonstration program, which aims to help families living in high-poverty public housing projects in five cities — including Boston — move to private housing units in lower-poverty neighborhoods. In the first, Kling, Liebman, Katz, and Sanbonmatsu compare the economic status and health of the adults whose families were randomly selected for the program with adults in similar families that received traditional housing vouchers and those who did not receive a voucher and remained in public housing. They found that five years after the program began the families in the MTO program lived in safer neighborhoods that had significantly lower poverty rates than those of the control group not offered vouchers. The MTO program, however, did not appear to produce significant effects on adult employment, earnings, or the receipt of public assistance. Adults in the MTO program had significantly better mental health and were less obese, but otherwise were no different than their counterparts for other aspects of physical health. In the second paper, Kling and Liebman report that the programs had differing impacts on male and female youths. Girls living in families that were part of the MTO program experienced improvements in education and mental health and were less likely to engage in risky behaviors. (Girls in families that received traditional housing vouchers also experienced improvements in mental health.) In contrast, males in both the MTO and traditional voucher programs were more likely than those who remained in public housing to engage in risky behaviors and to experience health problems. Since families with female children and families with male children moved to similar neighborhoods, these findings suggest male and female youth respond to changes in their environments in different ways.POVERTY, RACE AND DEMOGRAPHICS Reflecting national trends, the proportion of Boston low-income families who reported that they were working and not receiving welfare benefits increased significantly from 1999 to 2001 – from 43 to 54 percent – while the proportion on welfare dropped from 28 to 21 percent. However, while families who recently left the welfare system reported higher earnings than those who remained on welfare, on average these income gains were offset by higher expenses and a reduction in the receipt of cash and non-cash benefits such as Food Stamps. Some of the most vulnerable families still on welfare experienced additional pressures including material deprivation and poor health, which hinder their chances of transitioning off the welfare rolls. These findings suggest that any discussion about welfare reform needs to carefully consider the full compendium of supports that low-income families rely on to maintain a household while transitioning off the rolls. In addition, proposals to increase the work requirement for adults still on welfare should carefully consider recipients’ ability to comply. Asian Americans in Metro Boston: Growth, Diversity, and Complexity This paper uses 2000 Census data to describe the complexity and diversity of Greater Boston’s fast-growing Asian-American community. The Asian-American community grew 70 percent over the 1990s, compared to less than 6 percent for the total population. The areas of greatest Asian-American population growth were primarily in the suburbs. Different Asian subgroups have come to the United States under diverse circumstances, in different periods, and under differing immigration policies. A full 70 percent of Asian Americans in Greater Boston were foreign-born, and almost 40 percent were not citizens. The diversity of the Asian-American community is also reflected in the absence of a commonly shared language. Median income is slightly less than for whites, but varies widely by ethnic subgroup. For example, almost half of Indian households had incomes greater than $75,000, compared to fewer than 20 percent of Cambodian households. Wide differences exist in occupational structure, educational attainment, and household size. Poverty rates vary greatly among Asian ethnic subgroups, but exceed white poverty rates in all cases.
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Vol. 1, Number 1 | October 2004In This IssueCOMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT EDUCATION
HOUSING POVERTY, RACE AND DEMOGRAPHICS
Rappaport Institute for Greater BostonThe Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston aims to improve the governance of Greater Boston by fostering better connections between scholars, policy-makers, and civic leaders. More information about the Institute is available at http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/rappaport. Previous issues of Rappaport Institute Policy Notes can be viewed in pdf form at http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/rappaport/information/policynotes.htm Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston |