Location Matters: Social Networks, Neighborhood Effects and Economic Development in Urban India

该项目由三项研究组成，调查社区之间和社区内的社会和空间距离如何影响城市穷人的经济和社会流动性，重点是三个具体渠道：获得更富裕社区的改善住房，社区内的同龄人外部性，以及通过小额信贷机构提供的银行服务。这些研究收集并分析了艾哈迈达巴德的家庭调查数据。艾哈迈达巴德是印度第六大人口城市，位于印度工业化程度最高、增长最快的古吉拉特邦之一。虽然之前的一些研究对发达国家的社区效应进行了实证研究，但很少有研究专门关注发展中国家的城市地区。该项目填补了关于城市贫困的空间动态以及居住安排如何影响发展中国家经济流动性的实证研究的这一空白。它也增加了越来越多的文献，寻找同伴对学习和行为变化的影响的证据。传播这些研究的研究结果将产生广泛的影响，帮助政策制定者做出与针对城市穷人的住房、基础设施和银行服务的地点和特征有关的关键决策。第一项研究考察了艾哈迈达巴德的一个城市搬迁计划，该计划通过摇号将住房分配给以前住在市中心犹太人区的低收入妇女。我们利用抽签15年后从中奖者和中奖者那里收集的家庭调查数据，分析了搬到远离市中心的公共住房项目对受益人及其家庭的收入、职业机会和社会流动性的影响。这些发现直接关系到发展中国家许多地区的关键住房政策问题，例如在现有贫民窟地区升级住房与将贫民窟居民重新安置到“更好”社区的新住房之间的权衡。第二项研究使用一个类似的公共住房实验，在一个社区检验来自不同社会经济背景的随机分配邻居的同伴效应对向上流动的影响程度。这项分析利用社会距离的差异和邻居群体的多样性来调查与更富有或更受教育的邻居的接触如何影响态度、消费、投资和经济流动性。区分社区位置和社区构成对政策的影响很重要，因为政府不仅必须决定将公共住房设在哪里，而且必须决定是否将公共住房作为促进社区社会经济一体化的工具。最后一项研究考察了城市穷人的社会网络和社区位置如何影响金融服务的获得，而金融服务是向上流动的一个重要因素。对于城市贫民来说，小额信贷机构是金融服务的主要来源。城市小额信贷机构严重依赖信贷员的社会和社区网络来筛选客户。这项研究使用艾哈迈达巴德最大的小额信贷机构雇用的收款员的空间位置数据，来检验客户到最近收款员的距离的变化如何影响获得金融服务的机会，并利用这种变化来检查金融服务对穷人生活的影响。大量和不断增长的文献表明，获得金融服务可以显著改善穷人可获得的经济机会；然而，关于这个问题，仍然缺乏确凿的实证证据。

This project consists of three studies that investigate how social and spatial distance across and within neighborhoods affect the economic and social mobility of the urban poor, focusing on three specific channels: access to improved housing in a richer neighborhood, peer externalities within a neighborhood, and access to banking services offered through microfinance institutions. The studies collect and analyze household survey data from Ahmedabad, India's sixth most populous city located in one of India's most industrialized and fastest growing states, Gujarat. While a number of previous studies have empirically examined neighborhood effects in the developed world, few have focused specifically on urban areas of developing countries. This project fills this gap in empirical research on both the spatial dynamics of urban poverty and on how residential arrangements influence economic mobility in the developing world. It also adds to the growing literature that looks for evidence of peer effects on learning and behavioral change. Dissemination of research findings from these studies will have a broad impact by helping policy makers with key decisions related to the location and characteristics of housing, infrastructure and banking services targeted to the urban poor. The first study examines an urban relocation program in Ahmedabad that allocated housing to low income women who had previously lived in inner city ghettos by lottery. Using household survey data collected from lottery winners and losers 15 years after the lottery, we analyze how moving into public housing projects away from the inner city affected the income, occupational opportunities, and social mobility of beneficiaries and their families. These findings directly bear on key housing policy questions in many parts of the developing world, such as the trade-off between upgrading housing in existing slum areas versus relocating slum dwellers to new housing in "better" neighborhoods.The second study uses a similar public housing experiment to examine in one neighborhood the degree to which peer effects from randomly assigned neighbors of different socio-economic backgrounds influence upward mobility. The analysis makes use of differences in social distance and diversity of neighbor groups to investigate how exposure to wealthier or more educated neighbors influences attitudes, consumption, investment, and economic mobility. Distinguishing neighborhood location from neighborhood composition effects matters for policy since governments must decide not only where to locate public housing but whether to use public housing as an instrument to foster socio-economic integration of neighborhoods. The final study examines how social networks and neighborhood location of the urban poor affect access to financial services, an important element for upward mobility. For the urban poor, microfinance institutions (MFIs) are the primary source of financial services. Urban MFIs rely heavily on the social and neighborhood networks of loan officers to screen clients. The study uses data on the spatial location of collection officers employed by the largest MFI in Ahmedabad to examine how variation in a client's distance to the nearest collection officer affects access to financial services, and uses this variation to examine the impact of financial services on the lives of the poor. A large and growing literature suggests access to financial services can significantly improve the economic opportunities available to the poor; however, solid empirical evidence on this question is still lacking.