Neighborhood effects on secondary school performance of Latino and African American youth: Evidence from a natural experiment in Denver

We quantify the relationships between measures of neighborhood context and school performance (repeating a grade, grade point average and dropping out before a diploma is earned) for low-income Latino and African American adolescents ages 12–18. We employ administrative and survey data from a natural experiment involving the Denver Housing Authority's public housing program to minimize geographic selection bias and provide wide variation in neighborhood contexts. We use characteristics of the neighborhood initially offered by DHA to waiting list applicants as identifying instruments for the neighborhood context experienced as an adolescent. Cox proportional hazard models (OLS in the case of grades) demonstrate that neighborhoods having less social vulnerability, higher occupational prestige and lower percentages of African American residents robustly predict superior secondary educational performance in one or more dimensions, though magnitudes are typically contingent on ethnicity.