Does Moving Poor Families to Low-Poverty Areas Help Their Children?

Between 1994 and 1998, the U.S. government sponsored a program to test whether moving to a higher socioeconomic region would help poor families. The study randomized families from impoverished areas to receive vouchers to move to a low-poverty neighborhood (n=1819), traditional vouchers to relocate anywhere (n=1346), or no vouchers (n=1439). At baseline, only 23% percent of eligible families applied for study entry, and only 48% of low-poverty vouchers and 63% of traditional vouchers were actually used.

At follow-up 10 to 15 years later, 2872 adolescents (age range, 13–19 years) completed a structured interview for psychiatric disorders in the previous year (a baseline interview did not occur). Compared with no-voucher boys, those from famil…