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CSDE Seminar Series

Population Research Discovery Seminars

Heterogeneous Neighborhood Effects on Young Adult Educational Outcomes

George Galster, Clarence Hilberry Professor of Urban Affairs, Emeritus, Wayne State University


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05/05/2023
12:30-1:30 PM PT

101 Hans Rosling Center

101 Hans Rosling Center

Co-Sponsor(s):

Population Health Initiative

Using longitudinal register data from Oslo, Norway, this paper examines how cumulative childhood exposures to family and neighborhood contexts influence the educational attainments of young adults, paying special attention to how these determinants vary by gender and immigrant status. Specifically, we examine how neighborhood socioeconomic and immigrant context experienced during childhood affect the completion of secondary school and university enrollment during young adulthood. We assess the extent of effect heterogeneity for three immigrant status groups stratified by gender. We control for geographic selection using a recently developed technique that first models parental selection of neighborhood attributes and then uses the resulting predicted probabilities of selection as instruments in the neighborhood effects on education model. We find that neighborhood affluence, educational levels, and non-Western immigrant composition have important impacts on young adult educational outcomes, though results differ sharply by gender and immigrant status.


George Galster earned his Ph.D. in Economics from M.I.T. and is the Clarence Hilberry Professor of Urban Affairs, emeritus at Wayne State University, Detroit. He has published 168 peer-reviewed articles, 10 books and 44 book chapters on a wide range of topics. He has been a consultant to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, U. S. Department of Justice, numerous municipalities, community organizations, civil rights groups, and organizations like Fannie Mae, American Bankers Association and National Association of Realtors. He has served on the Consumer Advisory Council of the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors, National Academy of Science review committees, and numerous other positions in community service. He has provided housing policy consultations in Australia, Canada, China, Scotland, and the U.S. The Urban Affairs Association placed him on their “Service Honor Roll” in 2014 and awarded him the “Contributions to the Field of Urban Affairs” prize in 2016.