Neighborhood characteristics can affect residents’ quality of life

June 6, 2019

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] – Neighborhoods, which change over time, have major effects on the health and well-being of their residents. PSTC Associate and Professor of Sociology John Logan has long studied the spatial and demographic composition of US neighborhoods and how they evolve over time as different ethnic groups and racial minorities move in and out of certain urban areas. Such changes have major effects on the health and well-being of a neighborhood’s residents.

In a new project funded by the National Institutes of Health entitled “The Effect of Neighborhood Change on Health and Well-Being,” Logan will study who escapes declining neighborhoods, and who moves into – or is pushed out of – those that are improving. This project uses confidential census data on residential mobility and neighborhood change since 2000 to examine why some neighborhoods remain persistently segregated while others grow in diversity.

Logan is joined in this project by collaborators Hongwei Xu, PSTC alumnus and associate professor of Sociology at Queens College - CUNY, and Charles Zhang, former S4 postdoctoral fellow and associate professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.