你以为搬离贫民区就能脱贫吗

The county adopted policies dispersing public housing so that many of the tenants, who were 72 percent black and 16 percent Hispanic, were housed in middle-class, largely white apartment complexes.
蒙哥马利县采用了让公租屋散布在各处的政策。租户中，72%为黑人，16%为西语裔。按照这一政策，这些租户住在以白人为主的中产阶级公寓楼里。

This allowed Schwartz to measure the performance of children from public housing who attended schools with large numbers of well-off white students, against the performance of those who attended schools with largely minority populations and much higher poverty rates.
这样，施瓦茨就能够将居住在公租屋里的孩子的学业表现与大量来自富裕白人家庭的同学进行比较；对照组的孩子上的学校则大部分容纳的是少数族裔学生，而且家庭贫困率要高得多。

The results are striking. The low-income minority children from public housing all started with similar math scores. But after seven years, those who went to schools where fewer than 20 percent of their classmates were poor shot ahead of those who went to schools where 20 to 80 percent of their classmates were poor. This difference in trajectories is shown in Figure 1, in which the green line tracks math scores for poor children (defined as those receiving “free and reduced-priced meals” – a.k.a. FARM recipients) in relatively affluent schools, and the red line tracks math scores for poor children attending schools with much higher percentages of fellow students receiving FARM assistance.
结果相当惊人。住在公租屋的低收入少数族裔家庭的孩子，一开始的时候数学分数相当。但是七年之后，同学中贫困率少于20%的孩子，比起同学中贫困率在20%到80%之间的孩子，成绩遥遥领先。图1的曲线显示了其中的差异。绿线代表那些上了较为富裕学校的贫困家庭孩子（定义为领取“免费和优惠餐”[FARM]的学生）的数学分数，红线则代表所上学校里领FARM比例要高得多的贫困家庭孩子的数学成绩。

Perhaps the most important factors in the intergenerational transmission of disadvantage are the long-term effects on infants of living in extreme poverty.
也许，贫困代际传递最为重要的因素是，婴幼儿时期极端贫困带来的长期效应。

A study published by the American Academy of Pediatrics in 2011, “The Lifelong Effects of Early Childhood Adversity and Toxic Stress,” shows that “early experiences and environmental influences can leave a lasting signature on the genetic predispositions that affect emerging brain architecture and long-term health.” The pediatric study links “early adversity to later impairments in learning, behavior, and both physical and mental well-being.”
美国儿科学会(American Academy of Pediatrics)2011年发表了一篇研究论文，题为《婴幼儿时期逆境与有害压力的终生影响》(The Lifelong Effects of Early Childhood Adversity and Toxic Stress)。文中显示，“早期经历和环境影响可在遗传倾向方面留下持久痕迹，从而影响正在成型的大脑构造和长期健康。”这项儿科研究认为，“早期逆境与后来在学习、行为及身心健康上的缺陷有关。”

Early childhood stress affects the “developing architecture of the brain” in ways “that create a weak foundation for later learning, behavior and health.”
婴幼儿时期的压力会影响“大脑结构的发育”，从而“导致后来在学习、行为和健康方面基础薄弱。”

Looked at this way, the M.T.O. findings — that participants who were given vouchers for housing in low-poverty neighborhoods made no gains in employment and wage equality compared with those left behind in public housing and that their children showed no improvement in school performance — do not seem surprising.
从这个角度看来，MTO项目的研究结果似乎并不意外。评估显示，比起留在公租屋社区的家庭，拿到租赁券去低贫困社区居住的MTO参与者，在就业率与收入平等方面没有进展，他们的子女的学业表现也并无进步。

For one thing, participants appear to have been given little or no support other than modest housing counseling. But the issue is deeper than that: Multigenerational poverty is self-evidently more than a question of housing. It is unlikely to yield to even the best-intentioned one-dimensional approach.
首先，参与者似乎只获得了不多的住房咨询，此外几乎没有获得其他支持。但更加深层的问题在于：多代贫穷可不仅仅是一个住房问题，这一点不言而喻。即便是最具善意的单一措施，也不可能解决得了它。

Multifactorial approaches may be more productive. Recent papers such as “The Legacy of Disadvantage: Multigenerational Neighborhood Effects on Cognitive Ability” and “Neighborhood Effects in Temporal Perspective: The Impact of Long-Term Exposure to Concentrated Disadvantage on High School Graduation” are part of a continuing research agenda looking more profoundly into the causes of the intergenerational transmission of disadvantage.
综合多种措施可能会更加有效。为弱势群体境况代代相传的现象，寻找更加深层的原因，这是一个持续进行的研究议程。最近的一些论文，比如《弱势处境的传承：居住多代的社区对认知能力的影响》 (The Legacy of Disadvantage: Multigenerational Neighborhood Effects on Cognitive Ability)和《从时间角度看居民区效应：长期处于弱势境地对高中毕业状况的影响》 (Neighborhood Effects in Temporal Perspective: The Impact of Long-Term Exposure to Concentrated Disadvantage on High School Graduation)，都属于这个进程的一部分。

The criticism of the M.T.O. study (which is now complete) points to new avenues for exploration. Even though the interpretation of the results of the housing voucher program has become contentious and somewhat politicized, the debate itself has the potential to be constructive.
MTO这项研究（目前已经完成）遭受的批评，指出了可供探索的一些新途径。尽管对于租赁券计划结果的解释，变得富有争议，而且有点政治化，这个辩论本身却可能具有建设性。

Significant change is possible, but more resources and more sophisticated research design will be a necessary next step.
巨大改变是有可能的实现的，但下一步需要投入更多的资源，进行更先进的研究设计。

Lines of possible future inquiry include evidence-based evaluations of total-immersion school systems like the KIPP program and a better understanding of the effects of poverty on brain development. Perhaps most importantly, in the debate over “neighborhoods or schools,” would be a concentrated focus on reducing racial and ethnic discrepancies in test scores, according to the economists Roland Fryer Jr. of Harvard and Steven Levitt of the University of Chicago. Fryer and Levitt argue that the elimination of “the test score gap that arises by the end of junior high school may be a critical component of reducing racial wage inequality.”
未来可能要做的事情，包括对“知识就是力量”计划(KIPP)等完全沉浸式学校系统进行以证据为基础的评估，以及更好地了解贫穷对大脑发育的影响。也许最重要的是，在“社区或学校”的讨论中，把侧重点放在缩小不同族裔的考分差异上，哈佛大学经济学家小罗兰·弗赖尔(Roland Fryer Jr.)和芝加哥大学经济学家史蒂芬·莱维特(Steven Levitt)说。两人认为，在初中结束前消除考分差距，“可能会是减少种族工资不平等过程的一个重要组成部分。”

The two authors write, “we demonstrate that in stark contrast to earlier studies, the black-white test score gap among incoming kindergartners disappears when we control for a small number of covariates.” They add, “There is suggestive evidence that differences in school quality may be an important part of the explanation. None of the other hypotheses we test to explain why blacks are losing ground receive any empirical backing.”
两位作者写道，“和早期的研究形成鲜明对比的是，我们的研究证明，当我们对少数协变量进行了控制后，黑人和白人进入幼儿园前的考分差距就消失了，”他们还表示，“这是一个暗示性的证据，显示学校教学质量的差异，可能是导致考分差距形成的重要原因之一。我们也测试了用来解释为什么黑人的成绩每况愈下的其他假设，但它们没有获得任何实证的支持。”

We have to figure out a better way to approach intervention, whether it’s education-based or neighborhood-based or both. Otherwise how can we interrupt the intergenerational transmission of disadvantage we are only beginning to understand?
对于弱势境地代代相传的情况，我们才刚刚开始有所了解；必须找出一个更好的办法，来对此加以干预，无论这个办法是基于教育的，还是基于居民区的，还是双管齐下。否则，我们怎样才能阻止它继续传递下去呢？