Seminario di Monica Langella

AULA DELLA SCUOLA DI DOTTORATO, PALAZZO CÀ BORIN, VIA DEL SANTO 22 - ORE 12.30

10.10.2017

Diversity and neighbourhood satisfaction

Seminario di Monica Langella, London School of Economics

This paper uses UK data to investigate the impact of ethnic diversity on individuals’ attitudes about their neighbourhood. It considers a wider range of outcomes than most of the existing literature - overall neighbourhood satisfaction, social capital, residential mobility, fear of crime, and satisfaction with local services and social life. It uses longitudinal data, instrumental variables and sample selection methods to control for potential endogeneity of diversity and of the location choices in a more thorough way than most of the existing literature. We find that a higher white share in the neighbourhood raises overall satisfaction with the neighbourhood in our (overwhelming white) sample, but has no significant impact on generalised trust or other commonly-used measures of social capital. We suggest that part of the impact of diversity on overall neighbourhood satisfaction may be through an effect on a fear of crime.