Moving to Opportunity Background

Moving to Opportunity Background

Authorized by Congress in the Housing and Community Development Act of 1992, MTO is a unique experimental research demonstration designed to learn whether moving from a high-poverty neighborhood to a low-poverty neighborhood significantly improves the social and economic prospects of poor families.  Families living in high poverty public and assisted housing in Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and New York who applied for MTO were randomly assigned into two treatment groups and one control group between 1994 and 1998.  Families assigned to the treatment groups were provided Section 8 to allow them to move out of the high poverty developments.  Families in one of the treatment groups received intensive mobility counseling and were required to lease a unit in a neighborhood with less than ten percent poverty.  The other treatment group families could lease a unit wherever they chose, but only received the normal housing authority counseling. Those families assigned to the control group did not receive any Section 8 assistance but continued to receive project-based assistance.

This data collection is necessary to measure impacts and mediators approximately 5-years after families were randomly assigned to the two treatment groups and the control group.  The data are planned to be collected for six primary domains:  housing mobility and assistance; adult education, employment and earnings; household income and cash assistance; adult, youth, and child physical and mental health; youth and child social well-being, including delinquency and risky behavior; and youth and child educational performance.

An estimated 3,800 adult heads of household will be interviewed using the adult interview guide.  In addition to questions about themselves and their household in general,  adults will be asked questions about up to two randomly selected children/youth between the ages of 5 and 19.  Approximately 3,000 youth between the ages of 12 and 19 will be interviewed using the youth interview guide.  An estimated 2,100 children between the ages of 8 and 11 will be interviewed using the child interview guide.  Finally, the youth and children noted above above plus approximately 900 children between the ages of 5 and 7 will take an educational achievement test to measure reading and math skills.  All interviewers and testing will be conducted in-person by interviewers using computer-assisted personal interviewing (CAPI) software to directly input the data into a laptop computer.  The youth interviewing and testing will take place at conveniently located test centers.  Incentive payments will be made to respondents participating in this survey in order to ensure a high response rate.  Adult respondents will receive $10 for responding to an initial mailing seeking contact information, $50 for responding to the main adult survey instrument, and $25 for answering questions about their youth/children.  Youth will receive $50 for responding to the interview and completing the achievement test.  Small gifts (worth $5 or less) for children under 12 who cooperate with testing and (if 8-11) the interview.

Data gathered will be used by Abt Associates and the National Bureau of Economic Research to prepare a report to HUD on the interim impacts of MTO.  Subject to maintaining the privacy and confidentiality of respondents, the data collected will also be used by academics and HUD policy analysts to further explore what specific neighborhood mediating factors contribute to the neighborhood impact on outcomes for families and children. The information will be used by HUD and Congress to guide future housing policy in many areas, including housing mobility assistance and the location and concentration of assisted housing.

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