Here Comes the Neighborhood: The Impact of Immigration on Disinvested Urban Communities

Abstract

This paper examines the impact of immigrant communities on disinvested neighborhoods across American cities. A propensity scores matching technique is used to match high immigrant population census tracts with socioeconomically similar low immigrant population census tracts in Chicago, St. Louis and Buffalo. Eight socioeconomic indicators are then tracked over a period of time, indicating how the presence or absence of a large immigrant population affects neighborhood health. In Chicago, high immigrant population tracts performed higher overall on the indicators measured, while in Buffalo and St. Louis they performed worse. Possible explanations are offered, in addition to recommendations for policymakers that hope to grow and support immigrant and refugee populations at the local level.