The name is absent

The importance of context

Additional empirical evidence

Much of the large sample, quantitative research looking at the impact of
neighbourhoods on children’s development comes from the US. Direct applicability
to the UK is limited by differences in terms of the funding of institutional resources
and the different composition of communities, among other factors. However, there is
little UK research looking specifically at the relationship between neighbourhood
characteristics and children’s and adolescents’ development so we use this US
evidence as a basis. One exception is Gibbons (2002) who finds in the 1958 UK
cohort that neighbourhoods explain a small proportion of the variation in school
performance once family background effects are controlled for.

In general, studies on child development find that neighbourhood conditions,
particularly measures of neighbourhood SES, are accounted for, in part, by family
SES. However, living in an economically deprived neighbourhood may have a
negative effect on children’s achievement independent of family and school
characteristics (Garner & Raudenbush, 1991; Leventhal & Brooks-Gunn, 2000).

3.2.2 The effects of prior parental education on neighbourhoods

Distal factors, such as familial income and social class, limit where families live
either by impacting on their preferences or their constraints (Massey & Denton, 1993;
Wilson, 1997). Thus, although there is little evidence looking specifically at the effect
of prior parental education on location, there are strong theoretical grounds to expect a
relationship between parental educational level and location. More educated families
may choose to (or be able to choose to) live in neighbourhoods with better amenities
such as high quality pre-schools, successful schools, low crime and open areas.

Gibbons (2002) looked at the relationship between the educational strength of an area
and house prices. Conditioning on other factors, neighbourhood house prices
increased with the presence of more educated neighbours. Gibbons argues that the
education levels of a neighbourhood and its community matter because of spillovers
in the production of human capital in children. He concludes that house purchasers are
prepared to pay to live in neighbourhoods with greater potential for human capital
formation. Similarly, Gibbons and Machin (2003) show a positive effect of school
quality, measured by national league tables and property prices. These findings
suggest that parents value characteristics of a good neighbourhood, such as its
educational richness and the quality of its schools. If parents’ own education
influences the development of their children’s educational opportunities and their
aspirations for them the implication is that there is a strong relationship between
parents’ education and their choice of neighbourhood.

3.2.3 Summary

We conclude that there is substantive and relatively robust evidence to support the
view that neighbourhoods matter for children as a developmental context, although
the effect is not a major one. Parental education impacts on neighbourhood choice

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