title: Policy implications of neighbourhood effects on health research: towards an alternative to poverty deconcentration.
abstract: While researchers build an evidence that where one lives has an independent effect on their health, the work of translating this research into effective policies is impeded by problematic assumptions about urban poverty. In light of new experimental studies on the health effects of neighbourhoods using housing mobility programs, this paper addresses the politics of poverty deconcentration that implicitly undergirds much of this new research. By raising critiques of these programs that are rarely considered in the health literature, this paper challenges the central treatment of poverty dispersal in the new experimental literature. Poverty dispersal policies, without addressing the competitive urban structure, simply react to symptoms of poverty and ignore the underlying factors that shape the neighbourhood resources that structure health outcomes. These factors include municipal fragmentation, exclusionary land use planning, and municipal competition. Effective social policies aimed at improving neighbourhood influence on health must address the competitive and fragmented municipal structure that produces a patchwork of affluence and deprivation in today's urban America.
authors.affiliation: Department of Geography and Planning, University of Toronto, 100 St. George Street, Toronto, ON, Canada. antony.chum@utoronto.ca
authors.forename: Antony
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Chum
mesh_terms: D006306:Health Surveys; D006801:Humans; D011050:Policy Making; D011204:Poverty Areas; D012111:Residence Characteristics; D014481:United States; D014505:Urban Population