The Experiment of Moving to Opportunity

The podcast discusses a significant social experiment introduced by HUD aimed at improving the lives of low-income families through relocation to low-poverty neighborhoods. The Moving to Opportunity (MTO) initiative provided families with vouchers that required them to move away from high-poverty areas, attempting to explore whether changing their address would result in better economic outcomes. The research involved 4,600 families assigned to various groups, including a control group that remained in public housing and an experimental group mandated to relocate to neighborhoods with a poverty rate of 10% or less. Although the intention was to enhance educational and employment prospects through this move, the longitudinal study revealed minimal improvements in these areas, thus challenging common assumptions about the impact of neighborhood changes on upward mobility.