Neighborhoods and child development: the French experience

Project holder:  

Lidia Panico (CRIS, Sciences Po)

Research team: 

Lawrence Berger (School of Social Work, University of Wisconsin-Madison)

Emilie Grisez (CRIS, Sciences Po / INED)

Project description: 

Extensive research has documented socio-economic inequalities in child development, in France and abroad. Explanations for the (re)production of such inequalities have focused on microlevel mechanisms, such as home learning, living conditions, and family processes. Social sciences have also long recognized the importance of situating social inequalities within their wider spatial and ecological setting. For socio-economic inequalities in child outcomes, the empirical application of these frameworks within the French setting has been limited to school factors. This project addresses this gap by exploring the interplay between a panel of neighborhood characteristics, child development, and socio-economic inequalities therein, using nationally representative data for France. Understanding the intersection of individuals’ agency, their environment and development is crucial to advance research on social inequality: individuals operate within social, spatial, and biophysical environments, and the opportunities and constraints those environments offer. Therefore, ultimately this project can contribute to our understanding of the interaction between social and environmental inequalities, and how they shape children’s development.