Life Course Events and Neighborhood Age Profiles

Noli Brazil, Yale University

A long line of research has found associations between neighborhood characteristics and individual well-being. While individuals have limited ability in selecting the types of neighborhoods they live in during adolescence, this ability increases during the transition to adulthood, a demographicaly dense period marked by the occurrence of key life course events. Recent research has found that the age structure of life course events closely mirrors internal migration age profiles. However, there has been no investigation of the types of neighborhoods that individuals experiencing a life course migration move into and how the characteristics of destination neighborhoods differ by race. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, this article examines neighborhood racial and socioeconomic change arising with the co-occurrence of migration and four key life course events - starting a new job, marriage, childbearing, and entrance into college - that mark the transition to adulthood.