The Moving to Opportunity (MTO) experiment offered over 4,000 public housing
residents in five U.S. cities the opportunity to move to very low poverty neighborhoods. Results
from a survey conducted four to seven years after random assignment showed that boys in the
experimental group fared no better or worse on measures of risk behavior than their controlgroup
counterparts, while girls in the experimental group demonstrated better mental health and
lower risk behavior relative to control group girls. We seek to understand these differences by
analyzing data from the survey and from in-depth interviews conducted with a random
subsample of 86 teens 14 to 19 years old in Baltimore and Chicago. We find that control group
boys, especially in Baltimore, deployed conscious strategies for avoiding neighborhood trouble,
in contrast to many experimental boys who had subsequently moved back to higher poverty
neighborhoods. Second, experimental group girls’ patterns of activity fit in more easily in lowpoverty
neighborhoods than boys’, whose routines tended to draw negative reactions from
community members and agents of social control. Third, experimental boys were far less likely
to have strong connections to non-biological father figures than controls, which may have
contributed to behavioral and mental health problems.

Families originally living in public housing were assigned housing vouchers by lottery,
encouraging moves to neighborhoods with lower poverty rates. Although we had hypothesized
that reading and math test scores would be higher among children in families offered vouchers
(with larger effects among younger children), the results show no significant effects on test
scores for any age group among over 5000 children ages 6 to 20 in 2002 who were assessed four
to seven years after randomization. Program impacts on school environments were considerably
smaller than impacts on neighborhoods, suggesting that achievement-related benefits from
improved neighborhood environments are small.

The Moving To Opportunity randomized housing voucher demonstration finds virtually no significant
effects on employment or earnings of adults. Using qualitative data from in-depth, semi-structured
interviews with 67 participants in Baltimore, we find that although the voucher and control groups have
similar rates of employment and earnings, respondents’ relationship to the labor market does differ by
program group. Our analysis suggests that the voucher group did not experience employment or earnings
gains in part because of human capital barriers that existed prior to moving to a low-poverty
neighborhood. In addition, employed respondents in all groups were heavily concentrated in retail and
health care jobs. To secure or maintain employment, they relied heavily on a particular job search strategy
– informal referrals from similarly skilled and credentialed acquaintances who already held jobs in these
sectors. Though experimentals were more likely to have employed neighbors, few of their neighbors held
jobs in these sectors and could not provide such referrals. Thus controls had an easier time garnering
such referrals. Additionally, the configuration of the metropolitan area’s public transportation routes in
relationship to the locations of hospitals, nursing homes, and malls posed additional transportation
challenges to experimentals as they searched for employment – challenges controls were less likely to
face.