Neighborhood trajectories of low-income US households: An application of sequence analysis

Neighborhood poverty experienced over time by low-income households is a topic of increasing interest and public policy importance. We employ sequence analysis of neighborhood poverty rates to identify distinct patterns among the 18- to 22-year longitudinal residential trajectories of 389 low-income households in the United States who formed households during 1988-1992, as represented in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. Our most striking finding is the important role of poverty in their first neighborhood to the probability that low-income households ultimately reside in neighborhoods with higher poverty rates. Contrary to conventional wisdom, there are a wide variety of neighborhood poverty trajectories that low-income American households experience. However, those with felicitous neighborhood trajectories were almost entirely White households. The majority of Blacks formed households in high-poverty neighborhoods and were unlikely to live in any other sort of neighborhood for the next two decades when they are typically raising children. In addition, both in-place neighborhood changes and residential mobility have likely led to this racial variation in low-income neighborhood trajectories. We contribute to the evidence base about the role of place in perpetuating socioeconomic and racial inequalities.