Doctoral Dissertation Research: Skill-Based Sorting into Neighborhoods and Schools

该项目的核心目标是评估，在一个以市场为基础、以选择为导向的城市政策时代，父母的认知和社会情感技能是否有助于获得有利于其子女技能增长和教育成就的邻里和学校环境。高技能的父母采取不同的策略来培养他们孩子的智力和社会情感发展，这反过来又促进了代际流动。然而，我们对父母的技能是否以及如何帮助他们的孩子进入两个也塑造了代际流动性的领域--社区和学校--知之甚少。在住房市场和教育招生变化促进了更多的选择和信息获取的时代(例如，第8条住房优惠券、择校政策)，父母的智力和社会情感技能是否预示着进入社区和学校的背景有利于他们孩子的技能增长和教育成功？拥有比以往任何时候都更多的选择和更多的信息，认知和社会情感技能水平更高的父母可能更有可能在更高质量的社区抚养孩子，并将他们送到更高质量的学校，即使是在比较人口统计背景、经济状况和教育水平相似的父母时也是如此。反过来，进入更高质量的社区和学校可能会有意义地塑造孩子随后的认知和社会情感技能增长，以及他们高中毕业和进入大学的可能性。这些命题的调查结果将有助于机会和城市政策的辩论。为了调查该项目的问题，将建立两种统计模型：(1)社区和学校选择的离散选择模型；(2)社区和学校对儿童认知和社会情绪成长影响的增值模型。主要数据来源包括大约1,000个时变的、地理编码的住宿和学校入学历史，这些历史是在本世纪头十年收集的。这些数据将与认知和社会情感技能、人口特征和教育程度的个人层面的衡量标准，以及来自人口普查、地理信息系统和行政(即州和地方政府)来源的不断变化的家庭层面的收入和财富衡量标准以及社区和学校层面的质量数据结合在一起。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The core objective of this project is to evaluate whether, in an era of market-based, choice-oriented urban policy, parents' cognitive and socioemotional skills facilitate access to neighborhood and school contexts conducive to their children's skill growth and educational attainment. Highly skilled parents deploy distinct strategies to cultivate their children's intellectual and socioemotional development, which in turn promotes intergenerational mobility. Yet we know little about whether and how parents' skills facilitate their children's access to two domains that also shape intergenerational mobility: neighborhoods and schools. In an era of housing market and educational enrollment changes that foster increased choice and information access (e.g., Section 8 housing vouchers, school choice policies), do parents' intellectual and socioemotional skills predict entry into neighborhood and school contexts conducive to their children's skill growth and educational success? Armed with more choices and more information than ever before, parents with higher cognitive and socioemotional skill levels may be more likely to raise their children in higher-quality neighborhoods and place them into higher-quality schools, even when comparing parents with similar demographic backgrounds, economic circumstances, and educational attainment levels. In turn, access to higher-quality neighborhoods and schools may meaningfully shape children's subsequent cognitive and socioemotional skill growth and their likelihood of high school graduation and college enrollment. Findings from investigation of these propositions will contribute to debates over opportunity and urban policy.To investigate the questions of this project, two kinds of statistical models will be built: (1) discrete choice models of neighborhood and school selection and (2) value-added models of neighborhood and school effects on children's cognitive and socioemotional growth. The primary data source includes approximately 1,000 time-varying, geocoded residential and school enrollment histories, collected over about ten years in the 2000s. These data will be combined with individual-level measures of cognitive and socioemotional skills, demographic characteristics, and educational attainment, as well as time-varying household-level measures of income and wealth and neighborhood- and school-level quality data derived from census, geographic information system, and administrative (i.e., state and local government) sources.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.