Jared N. Schachner

This chapter seeks to develop a more expansive theoretical model for understanding the link between neighborhood gentrification and school demographic changes, with three primary objectives. First, we review recent scholarship on this topic, noting that much of this work—mainly single-city case studies or national-level analyses—emphasizes school choice, particularly charter schools, as the central factor moderating the gentrification–school composition link. Second, we argue that this research often overlooks additional moderators operating at larger spatial scales, specifically state and regional dynamics. Factors such as housing supply constraints, regional fragmentation, transportation access, and overall crime dynamics may supplement the influence of school choice policies. Lastly, by applying this expanded lens, we aim to reconcile the varied findings of prior studies and propose a multilevel empirical approach designed to capture the influence of metropolitan-, state-, and nation-level factors on the relationship between neighborhood gentrification and school demographic shifts.

Minority and socioeconomically disadvantaged populations are disproportionately exposed to elevated levels of air pollution. This environmental injustice exhibits distinct patterns and predictors across regions of the United States, which we investigate by leveraging baseline data (2016-2018) from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study, the largest longitudinal study of child brain development in the United States. Specifically, we examine within- and between-site variability in exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) among 9- to 10-year-old participants. Using geocoded residential addresses and hybrid spatiotemporal models, air pollution exposure disparities were estimated by site, and by family- and neighborhood-level socioeconomic metrics within each site. Results indicate substantial variation in race/ethnicity- and class-based gaps in air pollution exposure across the 21 ABCD study sites. Overall, Hispanic/Latinx and Black children experienced higher average levels of PM2.5 and NO2 compared to their white counterparts, while children in neighborhoods with lower socioeconomic status exhibited elevated exposure regardless of race or ethnicity. Within-site disparities highlighted local environmental injustices, as well, with notable differences in pollution levels across neighborhoods at different levels of disadvantage. Elevated air pollution exposure in minoritized communities aligns with well-documented systemic inequities in built environment conditions and institutional resources, exacerbating health disparities. This study highlights the importance of integrating environmental justice into public health and policy initiatives, leveraging the multisite design of the ABCD Study to provide insights for promoting health equity in child and adolescent development within and across regions in the United States.

Background and Objectives: Just as the U.S. population is aging and racially diversifying, housing prices are spiking. These conditions could spur a homelessness crisis among older adults of color. Although researchers have examined racial stratification and age-based differences in homelessness risk, separately, few studies probe whether age and race interact to render older adults of color more vulnerable to repeated episodes of homelessness than younger adults and older White adults. Fewer still have considered whether and why “Housing First” interventions (e.g., rapid rehousing [RRH], permanent supportive housing [PSH]) are disproportionately effective—or ineffective—in reducing this risk for older adults of color. Research Design and Methods: Using individual-level data from Los Angeles County’s Homelessness Management Information System, tracking Continuum of Care (CoC) services received between 2013 and 2019, we show how race and age jointly shape the risk of receiving additional CoC homelessness services after an initial CoC service. Linear probability models reveal whether PSH and RRH disproportionately reduce this risk for Black versus White older adults. Results: Our analyses indicate an age-race interaction, whereby Black adults aged 55–64 exhibit a particularly high risk of receiving additional CoC homelessness services after an initial service. PSH disproportionately reduces this risk for Black older adults. Discussion and Implications: We conclude that “Housing First” interventions may hold particular promise for older adults of color, perhaps because these groups sort into more effective programs, on average. Future research on aging and housing should highlight heterogeneity and consider program sorting processes as a potential explanation for it.

A digital information explosion has transformed cities’ residential and educational markets in ways that are still being uncovered. Although urban stratification scholars have increasingly scrutinised whether emerging digital platforms disrupt or reproduce longstanding segregation patterns, direct links between one theoretically important form of digital information – school quality data – and neighbourhood and school segregation are rarely drawn. To clarify these dynamics, we leverage an exogenous digital information shock, in which the Los Angeles Times ’ website revealed measures of a particularly important school quality proxy – schools’ value-added effectiveness – for nearly all elementary schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Results suggest that although the information shock had no detectable effects on residential sorting or neighbourhood racial segregation, it did exert modest effects on school sorting – particularly for Latino and Asian students – albeit not in ways that materially diminished school racial segregation because the racial compositions of high- and low-value-added schools were broadly similar both before and after the information shock. We conclude that the urban stratification implications of digital information may be more nuanced than often appreciated, with effects operating through mechanisms beyond residential segregation and reflecting racial heterogeneity in constraints and preferences vis-à-vis specific types of information.

Developmental science has increasingly scrutinized how environmental hazards influence child outcomes, but few studies examine how contaminants affect disparities in early skill formation. Linking research on environmental inequality and early childhood development, this study assessed whether differences in exposure to neurotoxic lead explain sociodemographic gaps in school readiness. Using panel data tracking a representative sample of 1266 Chicago children (50% female, 16% White, 30% Black, 49% Hispanic, μ age = 5.2 months at baseline, collected 1994–2002), analyses quantified the contribution of lead contamination to class and racial disparities in vocabulary skills and attention problems at ages 4 and 5. Results suggested that lead contamination explains 15%–25% and 33%–66% of the disparities in each outcome, respectively, although imprecise estimates preclude drawing firm inferences about attention problems.

Many recent studies have demonstrated that environmental contexts, both social and physical, have an important impact on child and adolescent neural and behavioral development. The adoption of geospatial methods, such as in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study, has facilitated the exploration of many environmental contexts surrounding participants’ residential locations without creating additional burdens for research participants (i.e., families) in neuroscience studies. However, as the number of linked databases increases, developing a framework that considers the various domains related to child and adolescent environments external to their home becomes crucial. Such a framework needs to identify structural contextual factors that may yield inequalities in children’s built and natural environments; these differences may, in turn, result in downstream negative effects on children from historically minoritized groups. In this paper, we develop such a framework – which we describe as the “adolescent neural urbanome” – and use it to categorize newly geocoded information incorporated into the ABCD Study by the Linked External Data (LED) Environment & Policy Working Group. We also highlight important relationships between the linked measures and describe possible applications of the Adolescent Neural Urbanome. Finally, we provide a number of recommendations and considerations regarding the responsible use and communication of these data, highlighting the potential harm to historically minoritized groups through their misuse.

Neighborhood disadvantage erodes residents’ mental and physical health. But whether rapid reductions in disadvantage spurred by gentrification attenuate or exacerbate these effects remains unknown due to mixed theoretical expectations and empirical results. To help clarify these dynamics, I propose a novel hypothesis that casts gentrification as a carcinogen. As neighborhoods receive inflows of affluent, White residents, influxes of private vehicles may come with them. In turn, stationary residents become exposed to higher vehicular emissions, and their risk of cancer—especially lung cancer—climbs. As an initial empirical test of these theoretical possibilities, I link Urban Displacement Project data identifying Los Angeles County neighborhoods that gentrified during the 2000s to tract-level data on vehicle ownership and cancer risk profiles—the latter from the Environmental Protection Agency’s National Air Toxics Assessment. Descriptive regressions that include a lagged dependent variable and municipal fixed effects suggest gentrifying tracts’ levels of cancer risk factors increased by ∼0.5 standard deviations more than those of disadvantaged neighborhoods that did not gentrify. Sobel tests of mediation indicate nearly half of this association may be explained by a pathway related to increasing vehicle density. The study thus motivates future research leveraging individual-level data and quasi-experimental methods to solidify whether gentrification is indeed a carcinogen.

Although socioeconomic disparities in cognitive ability emerge early in the life course, most research on the consequences of living in a disadvantaged neighborhood has focused on school-age children or adolescents. In this study, we outline and test a theoretical model of neighborhood effects on cognitive development during early childhood that highlights the mediating role of exposure to neurotoxic lead. To evaluate this model, we follow 1,266 children in Chicago from birth through school entry and track both their areal risk of lead exposure and their neighborhoods' socioeconomic composition over time. With these data, we estimate the joint effects of neighborhood poverty and environmental lead contamination on receptive vocabulary ability. We find that sustained exposure to disadvantaged neighborhoods reduces vocabulary skills during early childhood and that this effect operates through a causal mechanism involving lead contamination.

Suburbanization helped fuel neighborhood and school segregation during the twentieth century, but many American suburbs have dramatically diversified since. How do White suburbanites respond? With residential mobility declining and educational choice increasing, White suburban families may emulate their core-city counterparts, leveraging school enrollment to buffer their children from disadvantaged minorities living nearby. Yet recent research suggests proximate nontraditional school options (e.g., magnet, charter, private) are a key ingredient facilitating this minority avoidance strategy, and they are scarce in the suburbs. I propose that strong racial preferences spur White suburban families living amongst Black and Latino children to enact them even in unfavorable circumstances: by sending children long distances to nonassigned schools. Logistic regressions employing Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey data on over 2,000 children linked to administrative data confirm this expectation. Spatial stratification research should supplement its longstanding focus on city-to-suburb residential flows and core-city educational flows out of traditional public schools with sharper scrutiny of suburban school sorting as a potential third path of segregation. This selection process may reveal racial preferences to be even stronger—and educational opportunity structures more malleable—than often assumed.