Block, neighbourhood or district? the importance of geographical scale for area effects on educational attainment

Abstract

Researchers show an increasing interest in the question of how a neighbourhood influences its residents. The crucial question is whether place‐related factors have an independent effect on individual life chances. This study examines adolescent development, with educational attainment as the dependent variable. It further addresses contextual effects that emerge at different intra‐urban geographical scales by exploring spatial effects at block, neighbourhood and district level in Oslo, Norway. How does the population composition at the three scales affect the level of future educational attainment for adolescents? What are the most important aspects of the population? Is the impact of various population indicators similar or different across the three scales? A number of causal mechanisms, which operate at different geographical scales, such as social interaction, shared social spaces, stigmatization and institutional resources are discussed. The study has a longitudinal approach, and includes register‐based information about the whole population of Oslo and a young target population. The analysis is based on two‐, three‐ and four‐level modelling. The results reveal significant effects on the youth's future educational attainment at all geographical levels and for all tested measures of social and demographic area composition. The share of low‐educated neighbours seems to have the strongest impact. Contradictory to most other studies, the results show that the highest geographical level (district) has the strongest effect. This surprising result is tentatively interpreted to emerge from a combination of three interwoven mechanisms: the youths' extended activity spaces and social interactions, the institutional aspects (schools), and place stigmatization.