Neighborhood trajectories of low-income U.S. 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.