Moving away from opportunity? Social networks and access to social services

Abstract

Strong social connections often deter residential mobility beyond reach of the social network. A missing link in the body of research on this subject is the significance of the role of social networks in pooling resources for costly services and neighbourhood-level access to social services. Few have explored whether assistance from local social service agencies may substitute for practical help from social networks, thereby enabling low-income assisted renters to locate housing in more desirable neighbourhoods. Relying on data from the Moving to Opportunity experiment, this article examines the impact of social networks and social services on the dynamics of residential mobility. I find that the existence of social networks in the place movers left behind tends to increase the likelihood of moving back, but this likelihood varies with current access to social service providers and distance moved. These findings suggest that policy efforts in spatial dispersion of poverty should pay close attention to the geography of social services.