The Role of Exposure to Neighborhood and School Poverty in Understanding Educational Attainment

Jaap Nieuwenhuis,Tom Kleinepier,Maarten Van Ham

doi:10.1007/s10964-021-01427-x

Jaap Nieuwenhuis, Tom Kleinepier + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-021-01427-x

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Abstract

Because the demographic composition of neighborhoods and schools overlaps, their effects on educational attainment are not independent of each other. Throughout the early teenage years, the timing and duration of exposure to neighborhood and school contexts can vary, advocating for a longitudinal approach when studying schooling outcomes. This study uses Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children data (N = 4502; 49% female) to examine how exposure to poverty between ages 10–16 predicts educational attainment. The results indicate that enduring exposure to neighborhood poverty relates to educational attainment, while timing does not. For school poverty, longer exposure is related to lower attainment, but earlier exposure has a stronger impact than later exposure. Adolescents who were exposed to poverty in both contexts for the full observation period had the lowest educational attainment. The findings highlight the importance of understanding when and how long adolescents are exposed to contextual poverty.

Highlights

With a few notable exceptions, the field of contextual effects on educational outcomes rarely explicitly studies the neighborhood and school contexts simultaneously (Nieuwenhuis & Hooimeijer, 2016)
This study aims to examine the relevance of school poverty when studying the effect of neighborhood poverty on educational attainment using data from a study from southwest England, United Kingdom
What stands out is that most adolescents who were exposed to neighborhood poverty were exposed for the maximum of three periods, while exposure to school poverty shows a decreasing number of individuals

Summary

Introduction

With a few notable exceptions (see below), the field of contextual effects on educational outcomes rarely explicitly studies the neighborhood and school contexts simultaneously (Nieuwenhuis & Hooimeijer, 2016). Exposure to poverty at different ages will likely have a differential impact on adolescents’ outcomes. A temporal perspective is used to examine the effects of neighborhood poverty and school poverty on adolescents’ educational attainment in the United Kingdom, by employing crossclassified multilevel models, to account for the clustering of individuals in both contexts. By studying adolescents at three ages (10/11, 13/14, and 15/16), the duration and timing of exposure to contextual poverty are taken into account. Using this approach, this study examines the importance of both neighborhood and school poverty at different ages in adolescents’ lives

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