Recent neighborhood effects studies have largely focused on proximate associations between childhood ecological conditions and childhood outcomes. In contrast, Steven capitalizes on restricted data from the NLSY 1979 and NLSY Child and Young Adults cohorts to study how childhood neighborhood disadvantage impacts joblessness, income, obesity, and criminal justice contact in adulthood. Sibling fixed effects and cousin fixed effects models, which address unobserved confounding at the parental and grand-parental levels, suggest that exposure to childhood neighborhood disadvantage indeed impacts adult well-being. Moreover, he analyzes whether these neighborhood effects operate through sensitive childhood years, teen socialization, duration effects, and cumulative effects across respondents’ life-course. Lastly, he explores whether familial exposure to multiple generations of neighborhood disadvantage yield pernicious effects on well-being for grandchildren.

Steven has some availability on Friday morning; please contact him directly at alvarado@cornell.edu if you would like to speak with him.