The Moving to Opportunity (MTO) demonstration assigned housing vouchers via random
lottery to low-income public housing residents in five cities. We use the exogenous variation in
residential locations generated by the MTO demonstration to estimate the effects of
neighborhoods on youth crime and delinquency. We find that the offer to relocate to lowerpoverty
areas reduces the incidence of arrests among female youth for violent crimes and
property crimes, and increases self-reported problem behaviors and property crime arrests for
male youth -- relative to a control group. Female and male youth move through MTO into
similar types of neighborhoods, so the gender difference in MTO treatment effects seems to
reflect differences in responses to similar neighborhoods. Within-family analyses similarly show
that brothers and sisters respond differentially to the same new neighborhood environments with
more adverse effects for males. Males show some short-term improvements in delinquent
behaviors from moves to lower-poverty areas, but these effects are reversed and gender
differences in MTO treatment effects become pronounced by 3 to 4 years after random
assignment.