POLICY BRIEF
Briefs can be downloaded at www.bit.ly/UAFpolicy
March 4, 2016
URBAN AMERICA FORWARD: CIVIL RIGHTS ROUNDTABLE SERIES Edited by Micere Keels
The Need for a National Housing Mobility Infrastructure, by Philip Tegeler, Poverty & Race Research Action Council
In a recent landmark study, Harvard professor Raj Chetty and his colleagues found substantial increases in adult incomes and long-term educational attainments for children who move to and grow up in lower poverty communities, especially when children stay in these neighborhoods for a substantial period of time.1 This research builds on studies that had already found substantial health benefits for women and girls who move to low-poverty neighborhoods,2 and it confirms decades of educational research demonstrating strong short- and long-term educational benefits for low-income children who attend racially and economically integrated schools.3 As one New York Times columnist wrote of the new Harvard study, “Their findings are clear: The earlier a family moved to a good neighborhood, the better the children’s long-run outcomes.”4
