New Improved Economic Mobility Research

Recently published research from Raj Chetty with Opportunity Insights at Harvard shows that a public housing program helped kids escape poverty — by changing who they befriended.  

In 1992, the federal government implemented the HOPE VI program. Between 1993 and 2010, the program spent almost $17 billion in both public and private funds to transform 262 public housing complexes. Picture high-rises, once jam-packed with people living in extreme poverty, razed to the ground and then new, less dense housing complexes built over their ashes. These new housing complexes were designed to more seamlessly blend into surrounding neighborhoods.  They found that kids raised in HOPE VI revitalized public housing units earned significantly more as adults. The economists find that at age 30, the average person who had lived in HOPE VI neighborhoods as kids earned 16% more than those raised in the control group of kids raised in old-school projects that weren't redeveloped.

St. Louis Magazine, through its Economic Mobility Lab in partnership with the James S. McDonnell Foundation, also published a story highlighting how this has worked locally.